STACEY IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD

In this dystopian novel, patriarchal fundamentalists control Kansas, and a pregnant law student sees her plans unraveling in the face of an increasingly harsh religious regime.

In 2024, Stacey Davenport is in her third year at Kansas University Law School when she finds herself accidentally pregnant by her long-term, long-distance boyfriend, Grant. This already fraught situation is made more complex by the fact that Grant lives in the progressive blue state of Massachusetts while Stacey’s Kansas is becoming increasingly repressive, especially concerning the rights of women. Wounded by Grant’s withdrawal after she reveals her pregnancy, Stacey heads home to complete her law degree only to find that fundamentalist Christian control of her red state is rapidly increasing, and a new law forbidding pregnant women from obtaining graduate degrees may derail her career before it has even started. In addition, she discovers that her brother has been arrested for “Feto-Terrorism,” searching the internet for reproductive information, and proposed legislation will limit the options of unmarried pregnant women even further. Determined to salvage her dream of becoming an attorney, save her brother, and protect her unborn daughter, Stacey uncovers a hidden underground of resistance that includes her father, long assumed to have succumbed to his addiction to opioid drugs. As she launches her own battle against the powerful Rev. James Ezekial by attempting to gain a foothold in state politics, Stacey must learn painful truths about whom she can trust. Keech’s imagined dystopia is based in enough reality to be chillingly claustrophobic, as both women and men find their humanity and choices increasingly diminished. The subjugation of women is deftly tied to economic oppression (Ezekial is allied with a Koch brothers–like faction working to eliminate the minimum wage). And the social and religious elements that cause the women to be complicit in their own plight are disturbingly familiar. The story is absorbing, fast-moving, and unsettling without descending into hopelessness. References to blue state political correctness are tantalizingly underdeveloped, but as this book is the first installment of a series, perhaps this omission will be corrected in future volumes.

A powerful cautionary tale about the destructive effects of restrictive religious rule.