Just got hipped to this book on Friday by my Bay Area bro, who thought it sounded sorta familiar…
Here’s some more info on the novel, from the intro to a solid interview with author Ken Layne (who’s also the editor-in-chief at Wonkette [!]):
Composed as a collection of letters from a character called “N,” Dignity is set in the ruined housing tracts and bountiful desert of the American Southwest. The housing crisis has emptied the subdivisions, and the economic collapse has filled the cities with chaos and despair.
As Layne writes:
“Like villagers in a medieval town visited by the Black Death, the Californians were huddling together in terror, burying their dead, and doubtful they could care for more young. The long Western boom had staggered to a halt.”
In the midst of this apocalypse, a few resourceful people form self-reliant desert communities in their region’s foreclosed houses and abandoned strip malls. From the shells of this collapsing civilization comes a new way of life: The citizens of these new communities grow their food, school their children, create art, take long walks through their gardens and the surrounding wilderness, and enjoy a sane and balanced relationship with their natural surroundings, themselves and each other.
After the exodus to escape persecution in the city, the communities find they’ve been followed into the exurban ghost towns. As the mysterious character “B” says: “In their sickness, they will strike out at those in good health.”
Read the interview here: Q & A With Ken Layne On His Book ‘Dignity’
Buy the book here: Amazon
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