Dread Nation

Just days after Jane McKeene, notoriously known as the daughter of a white plantation-owner mother and an unknown "Negro" field-hand father, was born, the Civil War became a war between the living and the undead when bodies began to rise on the Gettysburg battlefield. Now seventeen, Jane is about to complete the combat training required by the Native and Negro Reeducation Act established in the aftermath of the Great Discord. Soon she will seek a position as a white society lady's Attendant, a chaperone/bodyguard providing protection from scandal and "shamblers" (the undead) alike. Her tendency to break the rules-including sneaking out to help her disreputable friend Jackson search for his missing sister Lily-gets Jane and snooty classmate Katherine shipped off to the Survivalist (read: white supremacist) outpost of Summerland to be Attendants on the frontier (read: zombie fodder). But upon arrival, Katherine's "passing light" appearance provides the girls with a handy, if distasteful, cover story-Katherine is a new-to-town white lady and Jane her Attendant-as they gain the sheriff's trust, look for Lily, and uncover the town's sinister secrets. This absorbing page-turner works on multiple levels: as unflinching alternate history set in post-Reconstruction-era Maryland and Kansas; as a refreshingly subversive action story starring a badass (and biracial and bisexual) heroine; as zombie fiction suspenseful and gory enough to please any fan of the genre; and as a compelling exhortation to scrutinize the racist underpinnings of contemporary American sociopolitical systems. An author's note discusses the history of exploitative Native American boarding schools, the real-life basis for Dread Nation's combat school system. katie bircher