WHEN SHE WOKE
By: Jordan, Hillary
A young woman's life goes from heavenly to
hellish is this dystopian vision of The Scarlet Letter from Jordan, who won the
2006 Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction for Mudbound, a searing
portrait of racism. Jordan now proposes a further, more insidious form of
discrimination. She imagines a society in which convicted criminals are
chromed-their entire bodies dyed to a bright color-and sent into the world to
face a sentence of public hatred and abuse. The victim in this story is Hannah
Payne, an obedient daughter of a morally righteous family who senses a spark of
sexual attraction with Rev. Aidan Dale, pastor of a powerful megachurch.
Quickly, Hannah's life takes a turn toward abortion, conviction, incarceration,
chroming, and government-sanctioned torture. Summoning up a newfound inner
strength, Hannah goes on the run and follows an Underground Railroad-like path,
where she learns to live by her wits and to trust no one. VERDICT Jordan offers
no middle ground: she insists that readers question their own assumptions
regarding freedom, religion, and risk. Christian fundamentalists may shun this
novel, but book clubs will devour it, and savvy educators will pair it with
Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter. TitlePeek
No comments:
Post a Comment