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The Freedom Factor
Bryce Sherwood, a young senatorial aide whose star is rising, is a key player in an attempt to pass an amendment that would eliminate the checks and balances built into the Constitution. When Nathaniel Gorham, one of the original Founding Fathers, appears to him, he is transported into a world where the Constitution was never ratified. In this strange world of oppression and fear, Bryce begins to learn the true value of the Constitution and the price of freedom. But will he be able to pay that price? Or will it cost him the love of Leslie Adams and her politically powerful family? Fans of Gerald Lund everywhere will enjoy The Freedom Factor, a gripping novel of courage and love that goes to the heart of the political strategem and maneuvers of present-day Washington, D.C.
295 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
49 people are currently reading
832 people want to read
About the author
Gerald N. Lund
87 books747 followersGerald N. Lund received his B.A. and M.S. degrees in sociology from Brigham Young University. He served for thirty-five years in the Church Educational System, and he served as a member of the Second Quorum of the Seventy from 2002 to 2008. He is a prolific and bestselling author of both fiction and nonfiction and is best known for his historical novels, including The Work and the Glory series, Fire of the Covenant, The Kingdom and the Crown series, and The Undaunted. He and his late wife, Lynn, are the parents of seven children.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 280 reviews
November 15, 2021
I wrote a script for a play on stage that was a remake of this book. LOVE IT! There is just so much to think about. A book that explores what the world would be like without the Constitution . Good stuff.
July 24, 2013
Before Gerald N. Lund wrote his Work and the Glory series and established himself as the Robert Jordan of the LDS fiction market he made his authorial way by writing short, entertaining and often silly political themed adventure novels.
Freedom Factor is one of these. The problem with reading these early Lund books is that his formula starts to wear thin. This one is a political book about the importance of the United States Constitution. The point it’s trying to make is a good one but I’m not sure that it goes about it in the best way.
The story involves a rather convoluted fantasy conceit that serves as this books piece of hand-waveium. The problem is that the preaching is not hidden well enough to not sound like preaching and the characters lack a significant believable reaction to unbelievable events. There are a number of other things that smack of author convenience such as people being in the right place at the right time, a Constitution-signing ghost who has magical abilities to change things dramatically at convenient time and to refuse to do so when more tension is required.
Lund is talented enough that these shortcomings become minor. The characters are mostly relatable with motivations that make sense. His writing is smooth enough to make you forget that you’re reading a book with an eminently silly premise to begin with. Until the ending it is a fun story that happens to have an easily overlooked message.
The ending proves to have no lasting consequences on the people involved, however, which renders the entire caper inexcusably pointless in so many ways that the rest of the book falls flat.
It’s like the book exists as a quantum particle that can either be good or… not bad, maybe annoying. Upon observation of the final, unfortunate and disappointing conclusion the entire book collapses into a quantum state of disappointment.
Gerald Lund has written a plethora of these short books that are really only LDS fiction because the characters act with LDS morals — they are rarely explicitly LDS — but this is the most banal of them all. Read it only if you are a completist.
Freedom Factor is one of these. The problem with reading these early Lund books is that his formula starts to wear thin. This one is a political book about the importance of the United States Constitution. The point it’s trying to make is a good one but I’m not sure that it goes about it in the best way.
The story involves a rather convoluted fantasy conceit that serves as this books piece of hand-waveium. The problem is that the preaching is not hidden well enough to not sound like preaching and the characters lack a significant believable reaction to unbelievable events. There are a number of other things that smack of author convenience such as people being in the right place at the right time, a Constitution-signing ghost who has magical abilities to change things dramatically at convenient time and to refuse to do so when more tension is required.
Lund is talented enough that these shortcomings become minor. The characters are mostly relatable with motivations that make sense. His writing is smooth enough to make you forget that you’re reading a book with an eminently silly premise to begin with. Until the ending it is a fun story that happens to have an easily overlooked message.
The ending proves to have no lasting consequences on the people involved, however, which renders the entire caper inexcusably pointless in so many ways that the rest of the book falls flat.
It’s like the book exists as a quantum particle that can either be good or… not bad, maybe annoying. Upon observation of the final, unfortunate and disappointing conclusion the entire book collapses into a quantum state of disappointment.
Gerald Lund has written a plethora of these short books that are really only LDS fiction because the characters act with LDS morals — they are rarely explicitly LDS — but this is the most banal of them all. Read it only if you are a completist.
October 17, 2009
Easy,quick must-read for adults and teens that is very hard to put down. I think it was written in the 80's but it is even more applicable today with our Constitution being in more jeopardy than ever. It is a clever combination of science fiction,romance, and mystery.
Bryce Sherwood, Legislative Assistant to an extremely powerful Senator,is unable to see the dangers of a new amendment which his employer authored and for which Bryce has been appointed to direct the national campaign.
He is visited in spirit, by a strange man with miraculous powers who claims to be Nathaniel Gorham, one of the original signers of the Constitution. Gorham, along with school teacher and amendment opponent Leslie Adams (a recent acquaintance for whom he has a romantic interest), try unsuccessfully to persuade Bryce to drop out of the amendment campaign.
Without warning Bryce is propelled into a different time and place. It is a world where the Constitution was never ratified, a police state called the Confederated States of North America, where poverty, crime and corruption are rampant, a world without hope. It is the "what if" world about which Gorham had tried to warn him.
Bryce is stuck there, and Gorham, again in spirit, tells him he cannot return to the world he used to know. Circumstances develop that put Bryce's life in danger as he finds himself on the other side of the battle in which he hopes to recreate the American dream.
Read this book. It is an interesting premise with an interesting perspective. It will change your understanding of liberty, and alter the way you feel about the Constitution and the men who fought for it. I am now anxious to read Lund's sequel,The Alliance.
Bryce Sherwood, Legislative Assistant to an extremely powerful Senator,is unable to see the dangers of a new amendment which his employer authored and for which Bryce has been appointed to direct the national campaign.
He is visited in spirit, by a strange man with miraculous powers who claims to be Nathaniel Gorham, one of the original signers of the Constitution. Gorham, along with school teacher and amendment opponent Leslie Adams (a recent acquaintance for whom he has a romantic interest), try unsuccessfully to persuade Bryce to drop out of the amendment campaign.
Without warning Bryce is propelled into a different time and place. It is a world where the Constitution was never ratified, a police state called the Confederated States of North America, where poverty, crime and corruption are rampant, a world without hope. It is the "what if" world about which Gorham had tried to warn him.
Bryce is stuck there, and Gorham, again in spirit, tells him he cannot return to the world he used to know. Circumstances develop that put Bryce's life in danger as he finds himself on the other side of the battle in which he hopes to recreate the American dream.
Read this book. It is an interesting premise with an interesting perspective. It will change your understanding of liberty, and alter the way you feel about the Constitution and the men who fought for it. I am now anxious to read Lund's sequel,The Alliance.
June 6, 2021
This book is a mess. The pacing was off, with nearly a third of the book required to get to the actual storyline, and there are time skips in odd places (really, there’s just generally more telling rather than showing, unfortunately). The descriptions especially seemed overwrought, particularly where the romantic storyline was involved. There were also these weird narrative asides designed to provide the reader with information that the author clearly couldn’t think how to fit in any other way, and that result in over explanation. For example, one character is introduced as another’s control officer, leading to this: “A control officer not only served as an espionage agent’s immediate superior officer, but he also directed the agent in the field. He was the communications link between the AIS and the field agent, procurer of needed supplies, provider of a safe escape route should the cover be blown. In short, the control officer was supervisor, nursemaid, emergency fallback, and, when necessary, psychiatrist and counselor.” Okay, sure, but in whose voice is this supposed to be? Why isn’t it simply included as dialogue? Instead, it seems like the author did a bunch of research on espionage and can’t bear to let it go to waste.
So the technical aspects of the book are pretty rough. But the ideological underpinning of the book is even worse. Bryce, the protagonist, is a key player in getting a new amendment to the Constitution passed in Congress that allows the government to be dissolved upon a two-thirds vote of both houses and snap elections to be held. This, according to the ghostly Founding Father who appears to Bryce, and to Bryce’s love interest, is a destruction of the Constitution’s checks and balances.
The problem is that no one ever explains *how* this destroys checks and balances. There are several scenes where it says that Bryce and an opponent argue about this, and how doing so helps Bryce sharpen his arguments for the amendment, but none of those arguments are ever shown. I understand not wanting to turn the story into a disquisition on constitutional law, but this feels like a glaring omission when the only argument referenced specifically is that the amendment will make the president beholden to Congress. To which Bryce responds that the government can only be dissolved by a two-thirds vote of both houses, an incredibly high standard, and that such an action will also put every member of Congress up for reelection as well, meaning they have to be sure they will be reelected or that their party will maintain control in order for dissolving the government to be worth it. Which is a really good response! Dozens of countries make use of no confidence votes to dissolve their governments and hold snap elections, and it doesn’t automatically result in a descent to despotism. Awkwardly, no character offers a rebuttal to Bryce’s argument, meaning that even though characters keep talking about how dangerous the amendment is, I had already been convinced by Bryce that it wasn’t and no one seemed to be able to answer him! So sure, you may disagree that the amendment is a good idea, but you’ve offered nothing to show me that this is somehow an existential threat to the Constitution and that Bryce’s support for it is somehow clear evidence that he doesn’t understand “freedom.”
The only other argument that gets articulated is that old canard of the Founding Fathers setting up a republic, not a democracy. Sigh. To be blunt, this distinction is meaningless because it rests on a willful misunderstanding of definitions. People who talk about expanding, preserving, or protecting democracy are not talking about Athens-style direct democracy, they’re talking about being able to vote for people who align with their values, i.e., representatives. No one I know of is advocating for direct democracy in a nation of 330 million people, and no one is suggesting that the Founding Fathers intended that. The ghostly Founding Father who appears to Bryce says that the fatal flaw in a democracy is that people realize that they can vote themselves benefits from the public treasury. But that can happen in a direct democracy or a democratic republic, since people vote for representatives who will do what they want and if you don’t please your constituents, you don’t get (re)elected.
Anyway, all this rhetorical nonsense left me annoyed that the side that can’t mount any convincing arguments is also the side the reader is supposed to root for and that Bryce is inevitably going to join. That’s just an impossible sell after making the case for the amendment so well and against it so poorly. On the other hand, maybe this is intentional because it turns out that this is all a set up for the ghostly Founding Father to send an unconvinced Bryce to an alternate timeline where the Constitution wasn’t ratified by the original thirteen colonies, which will somehow convince him not to amend it. Spoiler alert: the area east of the Mississippi is, of course, some kind of East Germany/North Korea/USSR hybrid, with secret police, forced collectivization, and general poverty due to socialism. Subtle, huh. From there the book follows a relatively standard, if shakily executed, storyline of organizing resistance against the oppressive government.
Here the two problems I have with this story surface again. First is basic factual weirdness with the timeline: why are there socialist republics in 1836 when the Communist Manifesto wasn’t published until 1847? Why is there a West Virginia when there was no Civil War to cause its split from Virginia? Slavery was a defining political issue for decades in American history; why is there literally zero mention of it in the alternate reality where, again, there was no Civil War? So clearly not thought about for any length of time and so. messy.
Second is the ideological nonsense: what on earth does any of this have to do with the amendment Bryce supports? The story has several episodes the purpose of which seems to be to show how dystopian life is without the Constitution, but instead they sound eerily familiar. Bryce is the victim of police brutality, something that has emphatically *not* been prevented by the ratification of the Constitution. He also has a close brush with border control since he doesn’t have legitimate papers, which, again, is *exactly* what U.S. border control does to undocumented immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers and that our country has decided is somehow constitutional. Bryce observes that “hospital stays required an endless nightmare of forms and permissions,” and, like, yeah, have you navigated private insurance while worried about if you would be able to pay the subsequent bill recently? It’s just *so painful* to read these incidents used as evidence of a Constitution-less dystopia and while knowing that they happen to people in this country *constantly,* despite the Constitution.
In the end, it felt more like two novels, one a political thriller and the other a story of a scrappy resistance taking on an oppressive government. Either might have been decent, but the two just keep getting in each other’s way and bringing the quality of both plots down. Add to that a continuous message about the importance of the Constitution disconnected from any real specifics, just that it . . . I’m not sure, shouldn’t be changed because that would be bad? It really does give the ideological game away that for all this Constitution talk, no one actually says anything of substance or with any specificity. Then top it off with a little generational condescension about “bright-faced, coddled kids, born of the permissive generation, suckled in the land of the free and barely aware of what they ha[ve]” in the conclusion, and yikes! What a mess.
So the technical aspects of the book are pretty rough. But the ideological underpinning of the book is even worse. Bryce, the protagonist, is a key player in getting a new amendment to the Constitution passed in Congress that allows the government to be dissolved upon a two-thirds vote of both houses and snap elections to be held. This, according to the ghostly Founding Father who appears to Bryce, and to Bryce’s love interest, is a destruction of the Constitution’s checks and balances.
The problem is that no one ever explains *how* this destroys checks and balances. There are several scenes where it says that Bryce and an opponent argue about this, and how doing so helps Bryce sharpen his arguments for the amendment, but none of those arguments are ever shown. I understand not wanting to turn the story into a disquisition on constitutional law, but this feels like a glaring omission when the only argument referenced specifically is that the amendment will make the president beholden to Congress. To which Bryce responds that the government can only be dissolved by a two-thirds vote of both houses, an incredibly high standard, and that such an action will also put every member of Congress up for reelection as well, meaning they have to be sure they will be reelected or that their party will maintain control in order for dissolving the government to be worth it. Which is a really good response! Dozens of countries make use of no confidence votes to dissolve their governments and hold snap elections, and it doesn’t automatically result in a descent to despotism. Awkwardly, no character offers a rebuttal to Bryce’s argument, meaning that even though characters keep talking about how dangerous the amendment is, I had already been convinced by Bryce that it wasn’t and no one seemed to be able to answer him! So sure, you may disagree that the amendment is a good idea, but you’ve offered nothing to show me that this is somehow an existential threat to the Constitution and that Bryce’s support for it is somehow clear evidence that he doesn’t understand “freedom.”
The only other argument that gets articulated is that old canard of the Founding Fathers setting up a republic, not a democracy. Sigh. To be blunt, this distinction is meaningless because it rests on a willful misunderstanding of definitions. People who talk about expanding, preserving, or protecting democracy are not talking about Athens-style direct democracy, they’re talking about being able to vote for people who align with their values, i.e., representatives. No one I know of is advocating for direct democracy in a nation of 330 million people, and no one is suggesting that the Founding Fathers intended that. The ghostly Founding Father who appears to Bryce says that the fatal flaw in a democracy is that people realize that they can vote themselves benefits from the public treasury. But that can happen in a direct democracy or a democratic republic, since people vote for representatives who will do what they want and if you don’t please your constituents, you don’t get (re)elected.
Anyway, all this rhetorical nonsense left me annoyed that the side that can’t mount any convincing arguments is also the side the reader is supposed to root for and that Bryce is inevitably going to join. That’s just an impossible sell after making the case for the amendment so well and against it so poorly. On the other hand, maybe this is intentional because it turns out that this is all a set up for the ghostly Founding Father to send an unconvinced Bryce to an alternate timeline where the Constitution wasn’t ratified by the original thirteen colonies, which will somehow convince him not to amend it. Spoiler alert: the area east of the Mississippi is, of course, some kind of East Germany/North Korea/USSR hybrid, with secret police, forced collectivization, and general poverty due to socialism. Subtle, huh. From there the book follows a relatively standard, if shakily executed, storyline of organizing resistance against the oppressive government.
Here the two problems I have with this story surface again. First is basic factual weirdness with the timeline: why are there socialist republics in 1836 when the Communist Manifesto wasn’t published until 1847? Why is there a West Virginia when there was no Civil War to cause its split from Virginia? Slavery was a defining political issue for decades in American history; why is there literally zero mention of it in the alternate reality where, again, there was no Civil War? So clearly not thought about for any length of time and so. messy.
Second is the ideological nonsense: what on earth does any of this have to do with the amendment Bryce supports? The story has several episodes the purpose of which seems to be to show how dystopian life is without the Constitution, but instead they sound eerily familiar. Bryce is the victim of police brutality, something that has emphatically *not* been prevented by the ratification of the Constitution. He also has a close brush with border control since he doesn’t have legitimate papers, which, again, is *exactly* what U.S. border control does to undocumented immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers and that our country has decided is somehow constitutional. Bryce observes that “hospital stays required an endless nightmare of forms and permissions,” and, like, yeah, have you navigated private insurance while worried about if you would be able to pay the subsequent bill recently? It’s just *so painful* to read these incidents used as evidence of a Constitution-less dystopia and while knowing that they happen to people in this country *constantly,* despite the Constitution.
In the end, it felt more like two novels, one a political thriller and the other a story of a scrappy resistance taking on an oppressive government. Either might have been decent, but the two just keep getting in each other’s way and bringing the quality of both plots down. Add to that a continuous message about the importance of the Constitution disconnected from any real specifics, just that it . . . I’m not sure, shouldn’t be changed because that would be bad? It really does give the ideological game away that for all this Constitution talk, no one actually says anything of substance or with any specificity. Then top it off with a little generational condescension about “bright-faced, coddled kids, born of the permissive generation, suckled in the land of the free and barely aware of what they ha[ve]” in the conclusion, and yikes! What a mess.
January 17, 2024
TOO MUCH KISSING 🤢🤮
August 17, 2008
An exciting novel about a man who is thrown into a world where the constitution was never ratified. Lund does a wonderful job of telling the story and helping you appreciate how truly amazing the constitution of the US really is, and how scary our country would be without it.
January 12, 2009
this book has everything besides mythical creatures.
it has love, betrayal, hate, history, adventure, guns, action, truth,
death,survival, cars, national monuments, government, even has an alternate reality.
it has love, betrayal, hate, history, adventure, guns, action, truth,
death,survival, cars, national monuments, government, even has an alternate reality.
April 5, 2009
This book is about the situation that America would be in if no Constitution was ever established. It has so much truth in it, and really makes you think of what road America is really heading down right now.
June 12, 2009
If you are a lover of the Constitution, or just want to appreciate the freedoms we enjoy everyday, this book is for you. Excellent. I like to read it every summer before the 4th of July.
January 12, 2012
I think this is the most amazing book there is about freedom. It teaches the value of The United States Constitution and takes you into a US where the Constitution was nonexistent. It is a must read.
September 4, 2025
3.5 stars
Many, MANY years ago, when I was probably a teen -- MAYBE early 20s, I thought about reading this book. My sister cautioned me against it. She was right. When I read it a few years later, I didn't love it. I thought his idea of a fractured United States was not really believable.
I have recently done a lot more study of that time period, and realized that not only was it believable, but was entirely plausible (even alluded to by Hamilton in Federalist 13). So, I thought I would give the book another try. This time, there were far different things about it that bothered me from a historical perspective.
1) Lund frequently referred to the time around the Constitutional Convention with colonial references. By that point, we weren't colonies and hadn't been for more than a decade.
2) There were problems I had with what he did with Canada. I fail to understand how the Constitution not being ratified by the United States would have had any impact on Canada which remained part of the British Empire until 1867 and didn't get full freedom until 1931. Although, I grant that this issue may be one that I just don't understand enough about.
3) He didn't explain what happened to slavery. At one point, Bryce and compatriots went south to help with the harvesting. While I admit that the idea of slavery still existing in 1987 would be appalling, I would have liked to know how it went away without the Civil War. No Union means no Civil War. (And actually 3 states said they would not agree to the Constitution if they were forced to give up slavery, which means that issue alone could have caused the country to fracture.)
4) The characters went to West Virginia, which only existed because of the Civil War, therefore would not likely have existed in an alternate history.
5) He talked about Thomas Jefferson trying to lead the South using the Constitution but wasn't able to succeed. Jefferson was not initially the Constitution's biggest fan, so I'm not sure I completely see that happening, although I do concede that again, I could be mistaken on that.
These are things that most people wouldn't notice, and far fewer would actually care about, but as a history teacher, I do.
However, I think my biggest problem with it was the idea that the ratification of the Constitution in 1788 doesn't necessarily mean it should still be the governing document of the land. Don't get me wrong -- I love the Constitution with my whole heart and soul, and I still firmly believe that it SHOULD still be our governing document, but we even had Presidents of the United States during the Progressive Era who felt like the Constitution needed an overhaul. I think Lund would have been better served to send Bryce 10-15 years into the future to see what would happen if his amendment had been ratified. It would have been a very different story, but that way there would have been no need to explain away any points in history and all my objections would be gone.
In the end, I rounded up because I felt like my objections were maybe just a little too critical (some of them very ticky-tacky) and too much from an academic viewpoint. Lund wrote this from a place of "what if" which means no matter what I think, his ideas are technically possible, so I needed to just sit back and simply enjoy the story. (Even the whole colonial thing -- there isn't another name he could easily call the people from that time period, and the people were there when the country was colonies, so I shouldn't have let that bother me as much as it did.) I also accept that I still don't know everything. :)
Many, MANY years ago, when I was probably a teen -- MAYBE early 20s, I thought about reading this book. My sister cautioned me against it. She was right. When I read it a few years later, I didn't love it. I thought his idea of a fractured United States was not really believable.
I have recently done a lot more study of that time period, and realized that not only was it believable, but was entirely plausible (even alluded to by Hamilton in Federalist 13). So, I thought I would give the book another try. This time, there were far different things about it that bothered me from a historical perspective.
1) Lund frequently referred to the time around the Constitutional Convention with colonial references. By that point, we weren't colonies and hadn't been for more than a decade.
2) There were problems I had with what he did with Canada. I fail to understand how the Constitution not being ratified by the United States would have had any impact on Canada which remained part of the British Empire until 1867 and didn't get full freedom until 1931. Although, I grant that this issue may be one that I just don't understand enough about.
3) He didn't explain what happened to slavery. At one point, Bryce and compatriots went south to help with the harvesting. While I admit that the idea of slavery still existing in 1987 would be appalling, I would have liked to know how it went away without the Civil War. No Union means no Civil War. (And actually 3 states said they would not agree to the Constitution if they were forced to give up slavery, which means that issue alone could have caused the country to fracture.)
4) The characters went to West Virginia, which only existed because of the Civil War, therefore would not likely have existed in an alternate history.
5) He talked about Thomas Jefferson trying to lead the South using the Constitution but wasn't able to succeed. Jefferson was not initially the Constitution's biggest fan, so I'm not sure I completely see that happening, although I do concede that again, I could be mistaken on that.
These are things that most people wouldn't notice, and far fewer would actually care about, but as a history teacher, I do.
However, I think my biggest problem with it was the idea that the ratification of the Constitution in 1788 doesn't necessarily mean it should still be the governing document of the land. Don't get me wrong -- I love the Constitution with my whole heart and soul, and I still firmly believe that it SHOULD still be our governing document, but we even had Presidents of the United States during the Progressive Era who felt like the Constitution needed an overhaul. I think Lund would have been better served to send Bryce 10-15 years into the future to see what would happen if his amendment had been ratified. It would have been a very different story, but that way there would have been no need to explain away any points in history and all my objections would be gone.
In the end, I rounded up because I felt like my objections were maybe just a little too critical (some of them very ticky-tacky) and too much from an academic viewpoint. Lund wrote this from a place of "what if" which means no matter what I think, his ideas are technically possible, so I needed to just sit back and simply enjoy the story. (Even the whole colonial thing -- there isn't another name he could easily call the people from that time period, and the people were there when the country was colonies, so I shouldn't have let that bother me as much as it did.) I also accept that I still don't know everything. :)
February 21, 2024
I really enjoyed this book. Interesting premise, and an unusual mixture of political drama/historical fiction/fantasy/dystopia. What an adventure!
Bryce Sherwood is on the fast track to an influential political career, riding on the passing of a constitutional amendment in both houses of Congress, but needing to be ratified by the states. The proposed amendment would disrupt the checks and balances set up by the founding fathers for the three branches of government. Someone unexpected intervenes and after failing to convince Bryce not to support this, Bryce finds himself launched into a different world where the US Constitution was never ratified.
My only criticism is that there was not much time spent on Bryce really internalizing the need for a republic, not a democracy, as a result of his experiences in this alternate world. He quickly jumps in to help with the resistance and a series of events happen as a result, but I wish there had been more about his convictions shifting in the face of his new understanding of the Constitution. He wasn’t just debating to debate; he genuinely believed the amendment was needed. I think it would have been stronger overall had this been addressed more. I also had thought that maybe it would be, for the alternate world, a jump into the future to show what the effects of that amendment passing would be.
All that being said, I thought this was unique and a fun combination of genres.
Bryce Sherwood is on the fast track to an influential political career, riding on the passing of a constitutional amendment in both houses of Congress, but needing to be ratified by the states. The proposed amendment would disrupt the checks and balances set up by the founding fathers for the three branches of government. Someone unexpected intervenes and after failing to convince Bryce not to support this, Bryce finds himself launched into a different world where the US Constitution was never ratified.
My only criticism is that there was not much time spent on Bryce really internalizing the need for a republic, not a democracy, as a result of his experiences in this alternate world. He quickly jumps in to help with the resistance and a series of events happen as a result, but I wish there had been more about his convictions shifting in the face of his new understanding of the Constitution. He wasn’t just debating to debate; he genuinely believed the amendment was needed. I think it would have been stronger overall had this been addressed more. I also had thought that maybe it would be, for the alternate world, a jump into the future to show what the effects of that amendment passing would be.
All that being said, I thought this was unique and a fun combination of genres.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 23, 2017
Many of the reviews I read regarding this book were very poor. They said that this was not Lund's best work and that the story was weak and the some of the parts were a bit corny, etc. I will agree, it isn't one of Lund's best works but it is far from being a poor work. I think many of those reviews may have come from readers who do not like fantastical plots or otherworldy types of content. I don't know. What I do know is that I enjoyed this book and really couldn't put it down after passing the halfway point. Great protagonist with pretty decent character development and an equally decent antagonist. Without giving too much of the plot away, I enjoyed what the story was about and thought it was very apropos for what's going on today.
July 11, 2017
Good book
I at first was not excited to read this book because I thought it was going to be a non-fiction book. However, it was a wondeful novel. I didn't get into it right away, the first chapter or two didn't grab me. Once I was in though, I was truly hooked and could not put it down. Lund used very intelligent vocabulary which I appreciated. He also wove together a story that did make you think about where you stood in reference to the constitution, The United States, politics and freedom. Nicely done.
I at first was not excited to read this book because I thought it was going to be a non-fiction book. However, it was a wondeful novel. I didn't get into it right away, the first chapter or two didn't grab me. Once I was in though, I was truly hooked and could not put it down. Lund used very intelligent vocabulary which I appreciated. He also wove together a story that did make you think about where you stood in reference to the constitution, The United States, politics and freedom. Nicely done.
May 2, 2022
I don't remember much about this book--I read it on the recommendation of a High School friend who shared my then-love for The Alliance, another of Lund's young adult novels. I remember being fairly intrigued by the alternate reality in which the United States never really came into being; all that I remember is that life was pretty oppressive and horrible for the unlucky denizens of that reality. Since I never read it again, though, I can assume that I found it passably interesting but not groundbreaking. :)
August 13, 2017
I enjoyed this book. It's purely fiction, but it makes you think. Some characters were pretty flat, and it was a bit preachy, but still an enjoyable story. My only complaint, I guess, was that the climax part of it, where everything was coming to a head, was hard to follow. I didn't quite catch all the time changes and who all the people were. But it all worked out and they lived happily ever after anyway. Good triumphed over evil. And that's the important thing, right?
January 12, 2021
It was a nice idea, and I suggest reading it for Key of Liberty, but it just wasn't executed as I wanted it to. It was also much too gushy with Bryce and Leslie. I've read worse, but the romance had no reason to be there. Leslie could've been a friend, maybe a long-lost sister somehow...? In my eyes, it just wasn't justified.
December 29, 2022
A Christmas carol meets the American Constitution. Considering it was published in 1987 yet is super relevant today is scary, just reading this makes me so grateful for The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Reading the pledge of allegiance part at the very end filled me with so much patriotism I was emotional 🇺🇸
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February 14, 2023It's always interesting to consider how things might have turned out if.... This book brings to life a vision of how life in America today could have turned out very differently if the Constitution had not been ratified and the colonies united. I'm not usually a fan of science fiction or time travel type novels but did enjoy this.
January 7, 2024
Fantastic book, what a way to look at our blessings of freedom. It may not have turned out as terrible in America without the constitution as this book portrays, we will never know. However, to see the freedoms and the peaceful lives that we have because of our republic, form of government, and the constitutional law is very eye opening to our many many blessings we have as Americans.
January 5, 2025
Kind of a candy book. A little too much romance, suspense, but not enough focus on actually why the constitution is better for us.
I did like how it focused on how “evil is always self consuming” and because of that it can “never permanently triumph.”
Not enough depth for me to want to read again, but once through was at least entertaining.
I did like how it focused on how “evil is always self consuming” and because of that it can “never permanently triumph.”
Not enough depth for me to want to read again, but once through was at least entertaining.
October 15, 2017
This is not my favorite novel by Lund, but it was still well done. It definitely makes you stop and think about our country and the things we can do to support and protect our freedoms. It's a quick read, but still thought provoking.
January 15, 2019
I learned a lot from this book about what America would be like if there wasn't the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. It makes me very grateful that the founding fathers wrote the Declaration and the Constitution so we could live in this great country today.
January 6, 2020
Beautifully written story
This is a very good book, that teaches children and adults alike about the freedoms we take for granted. In my 74 years I’ve never thought about our country in the way this book tells.
This is a very good book, that teaches children and adults alike about the freedoms we take for granted. In my 74 years I’ve never thought about our country in the way this book tells.
January 22, 2020
Okay. Wow. You want to know what America would be like without the Constitution? Read this and you will be so glad we have it! This book taught an amazing lesson about freedom! I am so impressed by the author's ability to teach this lesson through a fairly interesting novel.
April 14, 2020
It's interesting to see what the United States would be like without the Constitution. It is good insight on why there are so many checks and balances in the government. Freedom matters and our freedom originates from the Constitution.
July 6, 2020
This was great food for thought about the freedoms we have in our country and what it would be like if we lost them. America's a great place to live but with all the Black Lives Movement and the Defund the Police Department I fear for what our country will become.
July 7, 2020
Reading this book during the Covid pandemic in light of so many freedoms and liberties being taken away is eye opening. I’m looking forward to my children reading and discussing it in class this year. What is a free country worth and what could things be like without a constitution?
July 24, 2020
Not gonna lie, it's kinda cheesy. But the story is engaging and the little nuggets that explained the constitution were great. Not sure if the overall narrative is much more than a nice story but it was definitely a nice story with an inspiring message.
August 16, 2020
This book is not as good as his book, "The Alliance." It takes place in the 80's and is kind of cheesy, but the idea is a good one. In my opinion, it's actually a good book for early teens. They would enjoy the cheesy romance (there is nothing inappropriate), and the plot is easy to follow.
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