In 2006, The Book of Seila was on its second rewrite. Back then, it was called The Redeemers, and I made one blog entry about the book. It deserves to be refloated below:
Updated and revised excerpt from November 13, 2006 blog post:
It can’t happen here?
People have a tendency, when the rubber hits the road, to combine religion with militarism, and from there, demand conformity. I knew that we still had many hardships to endure in the future, including getting food and water to billions of people on a warming planet. As things get tight, we will continue to revert, regress, and react. Women don’t typically fare well under those conditions. All our leaders would have to do is to take away women’s reproductive rights, and women are back on the slide to dependency. And this has already begun.
Back when I wrote the first draft of The Book of Seila, I listened to religious leaders calling for a theocracy and read their strategies for easing their congregations and the general public into their way of thinking. The plans of the dominionists and reconstructionists are bearing fruit. Christian Nationalists are gaining real power in the U.S., and we’re already implementing draconian measures in some states.
I pondered many what-if scenarios based on what I knew of history, mass movements, current political trends, and cults. And I wondered, how could an oppressive religious regime affect the men and women in a small town in Georgia, the State where I live. Would some go along to get along? What if they didn’t? What would happen to the families of those who were accused of new crimes? Who would go into hiding and how would they hide when anyone could be tracked? Who were the informers? What if neighboring states opted out of the new government? And I imagined my main character and her sister and their unique problems in this society. Then I imagined others in the town where they find themselves. I imagined a congregation. Their neighbors.
I call my fictional town, Wendell, Georgia.
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