The 10 best zero to hero novels

The best thing a book can do is change a person for the better. While it’s not always easy to see how a novel is changing you as a reader, there are many books that show characters changing for the better amid difficult circumstances.
From neglected orphans to unjustly imprisoned convicts, these books exemplify a refusal to be content with life’s bad hands. Without further ado, here are 10 of the best zero to hero novels.
Author: Pierce Brown
Publication date: 2014
Set on Mars in a society with a color-coded caste system, “Red Rising” follows Darrow, who has worked in the mines for as long as he can remember. Darrow feels content with his life until he makes a “horrible discovery,” per Medium. He realizes that his people, the Reds, “are slaves, in service to a decadent ruling class.”
While Brown’s story stretches over six books, his characters undergo major transformation in just the first book.
Notable quotation: “You do not follow me because I am the strongest. Pax is. You do not follow me because I am the brightest. Mustang is. You follow me because you do not know where you are going. I do.”
Author: Alice Walker
Publication date: 1982
The New York Times described this novel in 1982 as “foremost the story of Celie, a poor, barely literate Southern black woman who struggles to escape the brutality and degradation of her treatment by men.”
Through the course of the novel, Celie escapes her abusive husband and starts her own business selling clothing. In its article, the Times refers to Walker’s novel as “without a doubt … her most impressive.”
Notable quotation: “People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”
Author: Orson Scott Card
Publication date: 1985
Card’s novel “tells the story of a young boy, Ender Wiggin, who is sent to a training academy named Battle School, located in orbit above the Earth, built to train people to become soldiers that will one day battle against a vast alien race known as ‘Buggers,’” The Guardian describes.
Ender begins the novel as a bullied outcast, and he ends it as a hero and a leader.
Notable quotation: “If you try and lose then it isn’t your fault. But if you don’t try and we lose, then it’s all your fault.”
Author: Stephen King
Publication date: 1982
In this novella, Andy Dufresne is convicted of murdering his wife and the man she was having an affair with. King’s website describes this story as “the most satisfying tale of unjust imprisonment and offbeat escape since The Count of Monte Cristo.”
King’s novella was famously adapted into a film in 1994.
Notable quotation: “It always comes down to just two choices. Get busy living, or get busy dying.”
Author: Charles Dickens
Publication date: 1861
“Great Expectations” tells the story of a boy named Pip, an orphan “who falls in love with a heartless girl and is brought out of poverty by a mysterious benefactor,” per Anne with a Book.
This novel does not follow a traditional rags to riches arc with Pip ending his story at the top of the societal food chain. However, Pip discovers a happier and more honest way to live his life.
Notable quotation: “Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but — I hope — into a better shape.”
Author: Donna Tartt
Publication date: 2013
Tartt’s novel revolves around two central figures: the 1654 painting titled “The Goldfinch” and a 13-year-old New Yorker named Theodore Decker, who loses his mother in a terrorist bombing in the Met.
While this novel does not have a conventionally happy ending, Decker is changed. Bright Star Book Blog, located in Northern England, described Tartt’s novel as “Life-affirming, emboldening and consoling,” adding, “It reminded me why literature is so often so essential, and can serve as such a profound source of solace.”
Notable quotation: “I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe.”
Author: Walter Tevis
Publication date: 1983
The heroine of this novel, Beth Harmon, begins her story as an isolated, awkward 8-year-old orphan. She finds a janitor playing chess in the basement, and people quickly realize she is a child prodigy.
Book reviewer Kartik Narayanan finished the novel in a single sitting, attributing its appeal to “Beth’s character, the fast pacing as well as the rags to riches story,” per Medium.
“Her battles with her addictions and other self-destructive behaviour, show us that the person she needs to defeat is, not the current world champion but herself,” Narayanan writes.
Notable quotation: “Her mind was luminous, and her soul sang to her in the sweet moves of chess.”
Author: Brandon Sanderson
Publication date: 2006
After discovering she has rare magical powers, Vin, a street urchin, is recruited into a heist and rebellion plot against a tyrannical ruler.
Forbes journalist Erik Kain called Vin “one of the best female characters in a fantasy novel that (he’s) encountered.” Vin is “a reluctant, mistrustful person with a horrifying past,” he wrote. “But you can’t help but like and admire her, both for her honesty and for her straightforwardness.”
Notable quotation: “But you can’t kill me, Lord Tyrant. I represent that one thing you’ve never been able to kill, no matter how hard you try. I am hope.”
Author: Mark Twain
Publication date: 1884
Twain situates Huck on the fringes of society. He begins the novel uneducated, neglected by his father and conflicted by the values of the mid-1800s. The New York Times praised this book and its craftsmanship a century after it was written, calling it “an extraordinary work.”
The columnist commended Twain’s ability to construct a good story, questioning, “How often does a hero who is so absolutely natural on the page also succeed in acquiring convincing moral stature as his adventures develop?”
Notable quotation: “I do not wish any reward but to know I have done the right thing.”
Author: Lucy Maud Montgomery
Publication date: 1908
As we’ve seen in other success stories, Montgomery places Anne Shirley at the bottom of the social hierarchy, making her a neglected orphan. Through her own efforts at being kind and making the best of things, Anne happily finds her place in society through the course of the novel.
A book reviewer from The Guardian explained, Anne’s “obvious wonder-struck appreciation of life made me truly appreciate the small things; and her never-ending determination and straightforward manner allowed me to grow into the person I wanted to be.”
Notable quotation: “It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.”