MOMENTOUS

Keillor’s political thriller posits a potential change to the U.S. Constitution.

The year is 2029. Brian Cornwall is a political reporter at the Washington Post who’s been on the National Politics Desk for the past 24 years. Things are changing at the newspaper; Brian will now cover something called Constitutional Journalism. He’ll be involved with the “Gouverneur Morris Project,” an organization that practically no one else at the paper has ever heard of. The bipartisan Morris Project studies Article V of the U.S. Constitution, which “spells out two procedures for amending the Constitution.” In the first, Congress passes an amendment that’s then ratified by three-quarters of U.S. states; the second way requires two-thirds of states to call for a convention for “proposing amendments” (the latter method has never occurred in American history). Although a report warns that a constitutional change should not be “forged in a time of divisive controversy,” as years progress in the story, political divisions in America are on the rise—perhaps the Constitution will be challenged much more quickly than the experts had imagined. A narrative propelled by a portion of an 18th-century political document is certainly difficult to make gripping—not only must readers grasp what Article V means, but they must also see how it might function in this near-future setting; the story succeeds in allowing the audience to do both. It also incorporates intriguing bits of American history, such as a government commission to implement the metric system in the 1970s. Still, it takes time for the novel to gather steam; characters make comments like “We’re looking at an impending crisis” only after many dry considerations of issues such as whether the United States is technically a democracy or a republic. Despite the slow start, the narrative ultimately brings the finer points of the Constitution to life in an entertaining way.

A highly illuminating (if dense) story hinging on a relatively obscure detail of American government.