First published 1999
Alice Mellings sits in another temporary squat, calculating how to keep her wayward political collective from falling apart. At thirty-five, she has become the unofficial mother to a band of drifting radicals who talk revolution but can barely manage their own lives. Alice finds housing, scrounges food, and smooths over the endless personality clashes that threaten their fragile unity. But when some members decide that talk isn't enough and begin planning actual terrorist attacks, Alice faces an impossible choice. She watches her makeshift family splinter as violence enters their world, bringing police attention, paranoia, and moral reckonings none of them anticipated. The group that once felt like her purpose now forces her to confront what she's willing to sacrifice for a cause that grows more dangerous by the day.
Genres: fiction, 20th-century, contemporary, activism
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, moral-dilemma
Setting: Africa
Period: 20th-Century
15 pages · Audio Cassette · Blackstone Pub
Content warnings: violence