To Cage a Wild Bird (2025) is the debut novel by American author Brooke Fast and the first installment in the Divided Fates series. The dystopian romance is set in the socially stratified city of Dividium, where the state profits from a brutal justice system. To provide for her younger brother Jed, bounty hunter Raven Thorne sends criminals to Endlock, a prison where wealthy citizens pay to hunt inmates for sport. When Jed is wrongly arrested and sent to Endlock himself, Raven must get herself incarcerated to attempt a rescue from within the deadly prison. The novel explores themes of The Dehumanizing Use of Suffering as Entertainment, Loyalty as a Motivation for Moral Compromise, and Forging Community as an Act of Resistance.

Fast’s novel, a New York Times bestseller, fits within the tradition of 21st-century young adult and new adult dystopian fiction, echoing works such as Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games and James Dashner’s The Maze Runner. The narrative critiques carceral capitalism, a system in which imprisonment becomes a for-profit enterprise, to examine how a society can become desensitized to state-sanctioned brutality.

This guide is based on the 2026 Avon Books Deluxe Limited Hardcover Edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide feature depictions of graphic violence, child abuse, physical abuse, sexual violence, sexual harassment, sexual content, emotional abuse, mental illness, illness, death, substance use, and cursing.

Plot Summary

In a dystopian future, the city of Dividium has risen from the ashes of a nuclear war. The city is divided into three sectors: the impoverished Lower Sector, the Middle Sector, and the wealthy Upper Sector, each governed by a councilor. Criminals, regardless of the severity of their offenses, are sent to Endlock, a prison where wealthy citizens pay to hunt inmates for sport. Hunters collect their victims’ teeth as trophies.

Raven Thorne is a 23-year-old bounty hunter in the Lower Sector; she captures fugitives and delivers them to Endlock in exchange for credits to feed herself and her 18-year-old brother, Jed. After their parents, members of a rebel organization called the Collective, were arrested and killed at Endlock seven years earlier, Raven dropped out of school and became Jed’s sole provider. She carries two strike marks on her shoulder, scars slashed by guards as punishment for minors’ crimes (three strikes result in being sent to Endlock). Raven took one of Jed’s strikes to spare him, a sacrifice that limited her employment options and pushed her into bounty hunting.

After capturing a fugitive named Torin Bond, Raven meets with Aggie, a Collective leader and her late mother’s closest friend, who asks Raven to intercept letters that Councilor Caltriona Elder has been sending to a contact at Endlock. Raven refuses. That same night, she meets a mysterious stranger named Vale at a tavern. When patrol guards catch them out after curfew, Vale kisses Raven as a cover, then shows the guards something on his wrist that makes them leave. Raven realizes Vale must be a guard and flees.

The next morning, Aggie delivers devastating news: Jed was arrested the previous night and has already been transported to Endlock. Aggie offers Raven a deal: The Collective will help her infiltrate the prison to rescue Jed if she also breaks out Kit Casey, a Collective member who has been imprisoned there for months. She will also have to escort Kit across the Wastes, a vast irradiated wasteland, to the North Settlement, a community outside Dividium that has agreed to accept them. Raven agrees, and they immediately stage a fake arrest.

At Endlock, Raven endures a degrading intake process and discovers that Vale works at the prison. He brands the number 224 into her forearm, then quietly submerges the wound in cold water to prevent deeper burns. In the mess hall, Raven meets Gus, a man who has survived Endlock for two years and has the highest possible ranking. He introduces her to Kit Casey, a quiet engineer; Kit’s girlfriend, Yara, a woman from the Upper Sector; and Momo, a 12-year-old boy arrested for stealing food. Gus serves as Momo’s protector. Raven also encounters Perri, whom she caught and turned in for selling counterfeit medicine. Perri illustrates her power in the prison by orchestrating a brutal ambush in the showers.

Raven is selected to participate in a hunt and is released onto forested grounds with the other inmates. It is enclosed by a fence and a contracting magnetic force field synced to inmates’ wristbands. The force field pushes inmates inward toward the Blood Tree as the hunters pursue them, and once they touch the tree, they are safe. Raven sees Jed on the grounds and reunites with him. She saves Momo by injuring a hunter, and she steals his rifle, hiding it for later use. She, Jed, and Momo reach the Blood Tree just in time. That evening, Jed asks Raven to stop treating him like a child and let him be an equal partner in their survival. She agrees.

After Warden Larch discovers that Raven attacked a hunter, he throws her into solitary confinement. A Collective agent slips a coded letter under the door, warning that the North Settlement will rescind its deal if she, Jed, and Kit do not escape within two months.

Vale sneaks in with food and comforts Raven through nightmares. In an exchange of truths, Vale reveals that there is no real food shortage in the Lower Sector. Endlock Enterprises and the Council engineered an artificial scarcity 10 years earlier to drive desperate citizens to commit crimes and increase the supply of inmates. After her release from solitary confinement, Raven begins strategizing with Kit and Gus. Kit reveals that she helped engineer Endlock’s security systems and can disable the wristband tracking, making her invaluable to the Collective. She needs a tablet connected to Endlock’s network to accomplish this.

Raven steals wire cutters to cut through the perimeter fence, but when she and Gus reach the fence during a hunt, Perri’s companion Cyril is shoved into it. He is killed immediately, revealing that Larch has electrified the fence, destroying that escape route. Perri retaliates by sneaking into Gus’s cell and shattering his ankle with a copper pipe.

Meanwhile, Vale reveals his and Gus’s knowledge of a hidden tunnel system beneath the hunting grounds, a leftover from the original prison that Endlock is built on, that extends beyond the perimeter fence. He pledges to help the group escape and accompany them to the North Settlement. He also reveals his father was secretly a Collective member who was killed by Eris Cybin, the rebel leader Vale had been seeking the night he met Raven.

During a hunt selection, Councilor Elder personally chooses Raven. She mentions her son, who works at Endlock, noting that he only came home briefly when his father died. Raven realizes Vale is the Councilor’s son. Distracted by this revelation, she forgets to warn Gus that the guards have been digging more camouflaged trenches on the hunting grounds. He falls into one, shattering his already-broken leg. Knowing he cannot survive, Gus makes Raven promise to protect Momo, then asks her to help him ambush Elder. He taunts Elder, drawing her to the edge of the pit. Raven tackles the Councilor, but she simultaneously fires her gun; the bullet kills Gus. Both Raven and Elder tumble into the trench. Elder survives with no memory of the fall.

Devastated but galvanized, Raven recommits to the escape plan after learning that Gus asked Vale to conceal his identity from Raven, fearing that the revelation would derail their efforts. Jed devises a plan: vaporize the ironroot through the ventilation system to knock everyone unconscious while the group wears respirators. Gray, Aggie’s son and a Collective operative, arrives at Endlock disguised as a delivery worker, bringing concentrated ironroot tincture, a powerful herbal sedative, and respirators. Kit hacks Endlock’s network using a dead guard’s tablet to disable wristband tracking on the night of the escape.

That night, the ironroot knocks out guards and inmates, but unbeknownst to the group, Larch, tolerant from years of using the sedative, stays awake. He tracks the group to the tunnels and holds a dagger to Raven’s throat, demanding that Vale use his influence with his mother to save Larch’s position. When the prison alarms sound, and Larch is distracted, Momo stabs him in the thigh. Raven breaks free and slashes Larch’s throat. During the escape, a guard shoots Vale through the shoulder. Unable to make the journey, he tells Raven to leave without him, promising to fabricate a cover story and follow once he recovers. They share a final kiss before Vale climbs out of the tunnel.

The five remaining escapees, Raven, Jed, Kit, Yara, and Momo, emerge beyond Endlock’s fence and trek through the forest for hours. They reach a clearing overlooking the Wastes, where Gray and another Collective member meet them. Raven pauses for a final look back toward Endlock, then turns and steps into the unknown.