Tour of War

In a totalitarian future, the haves live in the land of plenty, and the have-nots in the dead zones. Their secret government is called the Windows. Guardians keep the have-nots in check by feeding them chemicals, depriving them, teaching ignorance and spreading propaganda.
Heroes are cultivated by the Guardians in their killer academy. These fighters compete to the death in big arenas where the have-nots are entertained with abject brutality. Great rewards are given to the best killers.
Among the heroes rises Nick Nickelvee, who becomes the most famous of them all. But when he tastes life as a have, that rebellion seething inside of him begins to surface. Now human emotions, which were suppressed by chemicals, begin to take hold of his life. He begins an extraordinary journey of awareness, although he continues to kill. But it’s no longer for the competitions. He does so to survive in a new, uncivilized world.
It’s a world, already shrunken and decimated by past wars, where a new war between the haves and the have-nots threatens to destroy everything. It’s there where, Nick Nickelvee, trying to escape tyranny and then the war zones, marries twice and loses both wives. He meets lost children and takes them on a journey of survival across the continent.
This book is the first of a trilogy, which ends with the war presumably won by the have-nots. But nuclear bombs have destroyed more of the planet. Nick Nickelvee continues his journey to bring the children who have become his own to a safe island. But then they are attacked, and he can’t protect them. It seems, at this point, everything he’s done to bring them to safety has failed.