Dread Nation by Justina Ireland
(Format for this read: Print–paperback)
My oldest picked this up at Half Price books this summer and I wanted to read it before he did 🤣
Wow, y’all.
This YA novel is truly amazing from start to finish.
Here is the summary:
“At once provocative, terrifying, and darkly subversive, Dread Nation is Justina Ireland’s stunning vision of an America both foreign and familiar—a country on the brink, at the explosive crossroads where race, humanity, and survival meet.
Jane McKeene was born two days before the dead began to walk the battlefields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania—derailing the War Between the States and changing the nation forever.
In this new America, safety for all depends on the work of a few, and laws like the Native and Negro Education Act require certain children attend combat schools to learn to put down the dead.
But there are also opportunities—and Jane is studying to become an Attendant, trained in both weaponry and etiquette to protect the well-to-do. It’s a chance for a better life for Negro girls like Jane. After all, not even being the daughter of a wealthy white Southern woman could save her from society’s expectations.
But that’s not a life Jane wants. Almost finished with her education at Miss Preston’s School of Combat in Baltimore, Jane is set on returning to her Kentucky home and doesn’t pay much mind to the politics of the eastern cities, with their talk of returning America to the glory of its days before the dead rose.
But when families around Baltimore County begin to go missing, Jane is caught in the middle of a conspiracy, one that finds her in a desperate fight for her life against some powerful enemies.
And the restless dead, it would seem, are the least of her problems.”
This author is super talented.
She has mixed historical fiction and end of the world zombie plague with real issues of racism, slavery, oppression, and discrimination.
The authors note at the end explained that her idea for the “combat schools” in the book came from the real life Native American boarding schools that were started in our country around the late 1860s.
The primary objective of those schools was to force assimilatation of Native children to Euro-American culture. (If you are not familiar with this horrific part of American history, go Google it and educate yourself)
Powerful imagery and statements in here.
She also throws in plenty of humor, romance, scientifitic intrigue and what real friendships are truly made of.
This a unique book and I could not stop reading it.
Highly recommend for adults and YA alike.
I am looking forward to passing this on to my kid (I mean..it IS his book to begin with) so we can talk about it together…there will also be a sequel to this book which I am also greatly looking forward to.