My New Novel Scares Me

A year ago, I began writing a novel that scared me. Not because of the subject matter — or not only because of it — but because the story kept demanding more self-reflection than felt comfortable. More honesty about this country and about the privileged position a white man like me occupies when the nation is shaped more and more in his image and he hasn't asked for that and still benefits from it every single day.

The book is called Covenant City, and it’s set in an all too plausible near future. It's not hard to imagine the White House declaring martial law, canceling elections, dissolving Congress and the Courts. The story I set out to tell projects one more big step, an audacious plan to racially purify the land, one region at a time. You may have heard political leaders muse about something like that.

What would that project be like? How would it work? What would winning and losing look like under such a regime? That’s what I tried to imagine, and as it turned out, the seeds of this toxic plant were sprouting all around. For instance, the clearly dictatorial urges of our President and his team, the religious leaders (and he himself now) who equate him with Jesus, the armed para-military purges of immigrants (and the murder of citizens who resist), the encroachment of artificial intelligence into our lives, and the emergence of killer robots on the battlefield. Click on YouTube for the speeches of key Administration figures who speak candidly and longingly of a “Caucasian homegrown homeland.”

My novel sweeps all that together to imagine my hometown, Richmond, Virginia emptied, renamed Covenant City, and remade as a racially pure model for the rest of the nation. The story is told by a young white man caught up in the turmoil. He falls in with a group of multi-ethnic rebels who send him into the city as a spy. That’s the premise. I set the tale in Richmond because I live here, but also because this city carries more racial contradiction per square mile than almost anywhere else I know — a majority-Black city that was also the capital of the Confederacy. It felt like the right place to ask hard questions. To look at where we are in America today and shout a warning about where we very well may be headed.

Writing the book took me to some scary places. But putting it out there is scary too. In our polarized environment, some may read this story as a provocation. We’ve all seen what can happen to people who criticize the White House. I have my fingers crossed that all will go well. We shall see.

Covenant City is available now — paperback and e-book on Amazon, and also can be ordered through IngramSpark. The official launch date is June 6, and I’ll be posting about upcoming readings at local bookstores on this site. Please take a look and let me know what you think. And as my rally sign says: