So this morning I stumbled upon something while checking to see if Booklist had released its review yet (you know how you can reset Google to search for related info posted within the last few days), and found something that just disturbed me so much I had to address it here.

A reviewer, who got her hands on an Advanced Reader Copy of NEVERWAS, posted the following:

Let me set the scene for you. This is Maryland, a protest is taking place outside of a movie theater because it "still restricts blacks to the balcony". The cops fire tear gas into the protesters and then turn fire hoses on them. You're probably thinking, "Oh this book takes place in the 1950s", aren't you? WRONG! This book takes place TODAY, 45 min outside of D.C., half an hour or so away from where I currently live.

Let me f------g tell you something, book; I've lived all over the g--damn country, I've lived OUTSIDE the g--damn country, in a place where I, as a Caucasian, was the smallest minority of a population. I even grew up in the most liberal part of the country and yet, I have NEVER lived in a place that is more of a melting pot then [sic] where I live now, 45 min outside of D.C. This place is like a f------g fairy tale, everyone gets along, almost all my friends are in biracial relationships and there is almost NO racial tension. I'm not saying that it's not possible that things are the COMPLETE OPPOSITE such a short distance away, but for some reason, I'm having trouble buying it.

I honestly don't know if this woman didn't have access to the blurb for the book -- which states up-front that the story is set in an alternate timeline -- or if she just didn't bother reading the blurb beforehand.  She clearly didn't read to the end of the (short) first chapter, when Sarah states she now lives in the equivalent of the Confederate States of America.  And if the blogger had read the first page of the second chapter, she would have got all the explanation she needed regarding historical backstory, and why there is a Confederacy instead of a United States.

Quite obviously, I don't like being cursed out by a total stranger who didn't do any research before publicly accusing not only me and my co-authors of being cultural troglodites, but my agent and my editors at my publishing house, as well.  But what is most upsetting to me is that this woman's post -- and the obscenity-laden comments it inspired -- completely obfuscated the message behind why we chose to set the book in a dystopian alternate history to begin with.

Fantasy author Cat Hellisen -- who, as a South African, has witnessed her fair share of institutionalized prejudice -- recently commented on socially-ingrained prejudice (racial, in this instance) in an interview for her book THE SEA IS RISING RED:

I wanted to write about the way we treat people of an ethnicity or culture different to our own without using specific real-world cultures (yeah, it’s a cop-out, I am fully aware of this, it’s also what science fiction and fantasy loves to do.)

Hellisen went on to add:

I’d like to see more diverse fiction coming out of the US – diverse in culture, diverse in class, diverse in gender – but I think those novels have a smaller audience and will probably always see fewer sales than a YA that perhaps deals with easier issues.

It has always been an intrinsic part of our vision for this series to use the fantasy and science fiction elements in ways that allow readers to witness sexism, racism, classism and other common prejudices firsthand -- through Sarah's flashback visions and through the different realities she creates using the House as a time travel device.  AMBER HOUSE afforded us the opportunity to examine how women, traditionally tasked with safeguarding familial unity and identity, can fail just as easily as their male counterparts in this regard.  We may, culturally, assign women the role of tending the web of connection between past and present -- but is this fair?  What cost does this burden bear?

Kirkus, in its recent positive review, claimed NEVERWAS to be "a stark departure" from the Gothic feel of AMBER HOUSE -- this was a conscious choice we made long before AMBER HOUSE was ever published.  NEVERWAS may snare attention at the beginning with the controversial choice to set the story in an environment where remnants of segregation still exist -- a not-subtle-at-all threat to the burgeoning romance between Sarah and Jackson -- but readers will find that African Americans are not the only race targeted during the book.  And within the first two chapters, the relegation of women to restricted gender-based roles emerges as another obstacle the characters face.

The decision to incorporate issues of racism and sexism -- as well as xenophobia -- as driving forces in the sequel stems from an obligation we feel as authors to address injustice.  "Other-ness" -- using that which we are not as a means to define what which we are -- has fueled the ugliest compulsions of humanity since the dawn of time.  Man versus woman, white versus black, straight versus gay -- these are common, everyday examples of the dominant (normative) figure turning the "other" into the enemy out of fear of the unknown or seemingly unknowable.

By the by, the first scene in the novel is based on something which happened to my family in my hometown of Jacksonville, Oregon, during President Bush's re-election campaign.  The President was having dinner at one of the nicest restaurants in town.  Protesters had received clearance from the local police to assemble outside the restaurant with signs and a megaphone.  There were whole families with children -- even babies -- there.  Bush supporters were gathered on the opposite side of the street.  It was a peaceable gathering -- which, of course, didn't stop SWAT officers in full riot gear from gathering at each end of the street, or from assigning snipers to monitor the crowd from the rooftops of local shops.

After about an hour -- according to rumor, when the President had finished his dinner -- a SWAT officer with a megaphone marched down the center of the street, barking completely unintelligible orders.  Literally nobody could understand him.  The megaphone was so static-y that his words were all consonants, no vowels.  He could have been speaking an alien language.  Klingon, maybe.  But an older man who had been standing near the officer immediately started fleeing, screaming, "They're going to use chemical agents."  And as if on cue, the SWAT officers starting firing pepper gas pellets into the crowd -- the peaceable crowd of Republicans and Democrats, men and women, children and babies.

In this case, the President and his protection squad were the dominant, normative part of the equation, and the citizens of my hometown were the evil "other."  Which is a long way of saying:

Is plunking Sarah and Jackson into a world full of racists and Nazis extreme?  Yes.  Will it enable a wider audience to access the still-very-applicable message behind this choice?  Yes.

Mere decades ago, the setting Sarah inhabits in NEVERWAS was very real.  We've come a long way in a short time, but the "us versus them" battle -- where "them" is the "other," no matter what that other-ness might be -- still wages on.  We haven't had a female President yet.  Why?  When Travyon Martin walks through a predominantly-white neighborhood, he is killed in cold blood.  Why?  Despite a government based on the assertion of a separation of church and state, minority groups are still subject to the dominant Christian value system.  Why?

I'm not proposing answers here, I'm just stressing the need for everyone to keep questioning.  Why are things the way they are?  Are things ideal right now?  If not, how can we as a society make things better?  How can I as an individual make things better?  Sarah faces all these questions in the book, and it is our hope that readers will do the same.

Keep questioning,