Divided We Fall

dividedwefallWith all the political strife taking place in the county, it would be easy to mistake Trent Reedy’s first YA novel, Divided We Fall, as fact instead of fiction. Others agree; in a starred review, Publishers Weekly states, “… this cautionary tale screams immediacy and urgency, a page-turner that rapidly moves toward a catastrophic cliffhanger.”

The novel features Private First Class Danny Wright, a high school senior that also serves in the Idaho Army National Guard. While performing crowd control during a protest over the issuance of federal ID cards, Danny’s gun discharges accidentally, erupting the protest in chaos. A number of civilians end up injured or dead, and the governments of Idaho and the United States quickly begin pointing fingers at each other.

It can be easy for readers to envision wars as horrible acts that only occur on foreign soil, or worse, against people that are clearly the enemy. Reedy expertly shows that the distance between lawful protest to civil war is very, very short. Reedy also shows the full effect of war; we not only see the toll of the conflict on Danny and the other members of the National Guard, but Danny’s friends and family are drug into the conflict. Danny’s town is forced to take sides, to chose between their state and their government. The novel makes us question where our own allegiances would lie, should our state choose to nullify a federal law.

Divided We Fall is available in stores now. The second novel in the three-part series is expected to be released next year.

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