So many stories are set in larger cities and urban areas. I think that in literature for young people, small towns are often overlooked. What made you choose that particular demographic?įor me, Daniel Wright represents the sort of small-town kid with whom I grew up. Danny’s a quintessential good ol’ American boy. Your protagonist plays football, rides bulls, listens to country music, and drives a pickup truck. It all expanded from there, and came together pretty quickly. What would happen if a state utterly refused to enact a federal law? Would the federal government resort to force to compel that state’s compliance with the law? I thought of this character, Danny Wright, and how he would be placed in the center of this controversy. I was intrigued by efforts to nullify Obamacare, for example.

I was troubled by the increasing political divisions in this country and things like the efforts in Kansas and Missouri to nullify federal gun control legislation, and I wondered what would happened if these disagreements were allowed to fester, and draw out to their logical conclusion. I was inspired to write Divided We Fall after reading and watching the news, and taking in current events. What inspired you to write this new series?

In a conversation with PW, Reedy mused on the growing rift in American politics, the omnipresence of social media, and the potential role of his new book as a cautionary tale and tool for debate. Reedy’s military deployment to Afghanistan inspired his first book, Words in the Dust (Scholastic/Levine), about an Afghani girl who finds new hope and a chance at a better life after the fall of the Taliban.

For Divided We Fall, the first novel in a trilogy set in the near future, Trent Reedy draws upon his time as an Army National Guardsman to tell the story of a young man caught up in an impossible struggle between state and federal governments, one that threatens to tear America apart.

Divided we fall by trent reedy