American Empire: The Victorious Opposition

2003

This book takes us through quite a sweep of years, starting immediately after his previous novel, The Centre Can not Hold.

Down in the Confederacy, the Freedom Party have finally realised their dreams of power and are making damned sure that they don’t suffer the embarrassment of losing it in any future election. As a smoke screen, Featherston put into a systematic reign of terror against the increasingly unemployed blacks of the Confederacy.

In the United States, the Democrats found the effects of the Depression as intractable as their Socialist predecessors had, and neither party found any interest in what was occurring in the defeated South. After only a single term in the Powell House, the Socialists replaced the Democrats once more. The problems remained the same, however; the Depression was still keeping wages low and unemployment high, the running sore of Utah was still causing the deaths of American servicemen as they tried to hold down the rebellious Mormons; in Canada, too, the locals were still restive under the US yoke, with the occasional terrorist outrage killing a serviceman, or collaborator; those states taken from the CSA were proving increasingly restive in their demands to be returned to the CSA as well.

Beset on all sides by these problems the Socialist president acceded to the demands of Utah Territory to be recognised as a proper State in the Union and the former CSA territories were allowed a plebiscite – no need to overly surprised as to how the vote went I hope? Only Canada remained under the heel of the occupying forces.

As the world rapidly spiralled down towards war once more, all are braced for the horrors of what was to follow, but do they know what is really to come?

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