Review: Kamas
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 8, 2011
Kamas' main character is Paul Wagner, a businessman with a classic good family life in suburban Pittsburgh, who falls victim along with his family to a new America political system.The year is 2016 when, after a series of natural disaster events, a President of the United States begins his regime, a totalitarian nightmare where the old system of freedoms and rights give way to the demands of the State. Wagner runs his family manfacturing business, but The Events and the regime lead to a progression of taxes and inflation which make it impossible for the family to survive in America. Emigration is the route they choose, but imprisonment on a bogus charge takes Paul to a corrective labor camp in the Wasatch Mountain range of Utah. And his beloved wife and daughters are separated on totally independent ventures. The author incorporates historical references directly and indirectly which give the reader the sense of being in Stalinist Russia in the Gulags, or in Nazi Germany in the work camps.Life in the corrective camp Kamas revolves around Wagner but provides portraits of a diverse population who have been sentenced for various moves, real and imagined, against the State. The command and control system of the new regime are painted clearly, with historic parallels frighteningly clear. The perverse camp warden and staff, always looking to exploit the prisoners' labor and break their morale, become key characters in the lives of all. Wagner's will to survive and gut instinct to do what is right move him along a winding road.