The Giver

Jonas grows up in a community designed to eliminate pain, conflict, and choice. At twelve, he is selected for a rare assignment: receiving the memories that the rest of society has surrendered. Under the guidance of the Giver, Jonas experiences love, beauty, grief, and suffering for the first time. Those memories reveal the cost of his community's apparent order and force him to decide whether safety without freedom is worth preserving. The novel begins a quartet continued by Gathering Blue, Messenger, and Son.