A NEW GOD IN TOWN

In this speculative-fiction series entry, a megalomaniacal religious leader forms a cult that kidnaps unmarried pregnant women.

Stacey Davenport has been elected to the Kansas state legislature to oppose the ultrareligious Certainty Party, led by Reverend Ezekial. He attempts to pass bizarre laws that severely restrict women’s lives, such as the Make Our Motherhood Strong (MOMS) Act that aims to force unmarried mothers, unmarried pregnant women, and their sisters over the age of 12 to marry men of his congregation. Stacey, who’s unmarried and with child herself, stops its passage, so Ezekial and his motorcycle gang, the Genesis Riders, launch a terror campaign, kidnapping women who have children out of wedlock. One of the abductees, a young woman named Ruth, has been made one of Ezekial’s wives. Stacey’s sister, Amy, and father, Don, help Ruth escape, and she becomes a soldier in the fight to free the women of Kansas—including her own sister, Renee.Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, Grant, the father of Stacy’s unborn child, navigates state laws as he starts a new relationship with co-worker Eleni. The “Consent to Sex” form has been signed, and he and Eleni seem well-matched, but he can’t stop thinking about Stacey. Can the pair find each other again? This second installment of Keech’s Red State/Blue State Confessions series is an absorbing read, and it manages to effectively combine social critique with nail-biting suspense. Ruth is a particularly memorable character as a teenager whose militancy was forged in fear and violation, and other figures over the course of the story are similarly dogged and sincere. However, although the narrative delves into the implications of Red State Kansas’ harsh political atmosphere in some detail, its criticisms of Blue State efforts to legislate equality feel more thinly developed.

A gripping tale of suspense that takes fundamentalism to dystopian extremes.