Divided States by Rick Treon
Only a few years ago, you might have readily dismissed author Rick Treon’s vision of what America could become. The idea that parts of America would secede into their own independent countries seemed fantastical.
Of course, Americans have short memories. Remember, this already happened once and led to the Civil War. Many of us are old enough to remember the breakup of the Soviet Union into Russia and numerous other states. It couldn’t happen here, right?
Well, it’s no longer unusual to read about secession movements, and the voices that divide us now have the Internet and social media to use as steroids to pump their views. People in eastern Oregon talk about joining Idaho. Some Texans retain visions of restoring independence. Folks in upstate New York talk about sundering from New York City and its liberal suburbs.
In Divided States (Black Rose Writing), Treon, a former newspaper editor and award-winning thriller writer, sketches some worst-case but plausible implications if the nuclear genie is out of the bottle in a fractured America. In other words, if America breaks up, who gets the nukes and what would they do with them?
ONE NATION BECOMES MANY
Some of the new breakout states in the “Allied States of North America” have emerged with fascist and intolerant tendencies; one is a left-wing haven. For example, the “Republic of Oklahoma” bans anyone from practicing Islam. The “original” USA is primarily the Northeast and Upper Midwest with a less-powerful president. The South has become the “Federalist States of America.” The four West Coast states, including Nevada, are the “Liberated States of America.” Then there are the “Western Territories,” the independent “Republic of Texas” (of course) and the “free states,” two breakout pieces of Mormon-dominated Utah and the southwestern corner of Colorado. New Mexico has become part of Mexico.
To add to the drama, Treon outlines believable international crises that might emerge in such a scenario, including an even-more energetic and threatening China.
These large set pieces serve as the background of what’s actually an intimate and human story. The story focuses on an intrepid group of flawed operatives who probably can’t turn back time but feel compelled to do what they can to keep things from getting worse.
The story’s focal point is Lori Young, a drug-addicted and deeply damaged former detective. Young gets kidnapped as mysterious mass shootings occur in a number of American cities at once. Terrorists want her to pressure her ex-husband and his commando team into hijacking a nuclear weapon. If it explodes where they plan, they expect it to set off a domino reaction that’ll cause energy markets to collapse and force their will on a crazed vision of a reunited America.
A COMPLICATED YET BELIEVABLE SHIFT IN ALLIANCES
Readers need to pay attention to what quickly becomes a complicated web of unclear and shifting alliances. Instead of giving in to the terrorists’ demands, Lori leverages the help of a traitor in their midst to work with the team to try to avert the looming catastrophe.
It’s a wild journey through several of the new nations across the highways of Oklahoma, Colorado and other parts of the Southwest, turf that Treon knows well from years spent in Texas and the Panhandle region. The team’s travels might remind you a bit of a Mad Max movie in a story filled with plenty of energy and intrigue.
Pieces of the story briefly describe the ways in which the fractured states figured out how to manage a painful divorce, everything from maintaining the interstate highway system to splitting military assets and giving citizens time to move elsewhere if they can’t abide the place where they live. That could be an entire novel on its own, and the fact that it seems so plausible makes Divided States even scarier.
If only this tale didn’t fit our times so well. Treon, by the way, tells us at the book’s end that his haunting vision of divided America came to him in 2018 and is not based on the current, rather pathetic state of American politics.
Hard to believe, but let’s take his word for it and hope it doesn’t happen.
