Review: Startling but Compelling Portrait of an Alternate America
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 23, 2014
“UnAmerica” paints a startling but compelling picture of an America that could be (and in some cases, an America that is).It begins with Roger Gordon (Raj), sitting in the rain on a curb—he’s lost his job, his wife and child have left, and he’s being evicted. He makes a temporary home in the basement of the Righteous Temple of the Living Spirit of God, where he meets a streetwise young man named Wil and finds himself unwillingly wrapped up in the “Black Over” movement, which seeks to rally the poor classes to strike back against the rich. A violence-filled night results in Raj becoming a leader in the movement, and soon America begins to fall apart under the weight of economic disaster—and with a weak and inexperienced president who can’t hold the country together, things look bleak.This fictional book has a point to make—that inequalities in America could be devastating for our future, especially under unsteady leadership—but it does so in an entertaining way. Raj is a character you can identify with—he’s a good guy who has fallen on hard times, and with jobs scarce he’s not sure what to do. Yet he manages to become a leader and someone people look up to, even if at times he’s manipulated into it by the smooth Reverend Sammy Howley. There are scenes of action and death in the book, and some of them are very unsettling—the anger and the hatred of the “Black Over” movement did make me uncomfortable as a reader, I have to admit. But it also provokes you to think about current issues and situations, which is a sign of good fiction.I would recommend “UnAmerica” to readers who enjoy political fiction that addresses current issues and plays them out into an imagined future that isn’t out of the realm of possibility.