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Overview
Harper Adams was six years old in 2012 when an act of viral terrorism wiped out one half of the country’s population. Out of the ashes rose a new government, dedicated to maintaining order at any cost. The populace is controlled via government-sanctioned sex and drugs, a brutal police force known as the Blue Coats, and the slate, a mandatory implant that monitors every word a person speaks. To utter a forbidden, Red Listed word is to risk physical punishment or even death.
But there are those who resist. Guided by the fabled “Book of Noah,” they are determined to shake the people from their apathy, and are prepared to start a war in the name of freedom. The newest member of this resistance is Harper—a woman driven by memories of a daughter lost, a daughter whose very name was erased by the Red List. And she possesses a power that could make her the underground warriors’ ultimate weapon—or the instrument of their destruction.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781439123355 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Gallery Books |
| Publication date: | 11/02/2010 |
| Pages: | 400 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.30(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.10(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Veracity
AUGUST 4, 2045, EARLY AFTERNOON.
The deeper I get into the prairie, the more I realize that what I’ve been told about the wastelands is false. The trees here are green. The crops, tall and heavy with corn. There are no black clouds threatening to drip acid onto my car, no checkpoints full of frothing police ready to execute every onerous code they see fit. I haven’t seen a Blue Coat since Wernthal. God willing, it will stay that way.
An old farmer is hitchwalking down a line of corn. I see him in my rearview mirror as a blotch of spoiled yellow. This is how our world considers the inhabitants of this land. Spoiled and decrepit, not useful. But neither are they considered clever enough to pose a threat. So they enjoy the otherwise restricted bounty of nature. A wide-open sky. Grass. Neon-free, unfettered space. I envy them this, but only so much. We live in different prisons, but in prisons nonetheless. Theirs is made up of memories of the beforetime. Mine, of concrete walls and security checkpoints, of no birdsong and no breeze.
Fewer line boards are posted alongside the roads out here. Just one every few dozen miles instead of the standard one per block. Posters of non-sexually attractive housewives blink as I drive by. Stay Happy, at mile marker 1. Stay Healthy, at mile 32. Remember the Pandemic. Mile marker 78.
Used to be something different. Honor Those Who’ve Fallen, to communicate the whole of it. But the word honor got too many people thinking. The concept sparked a small fire in those of us not quite doused out, and we began to discuss the dishonorable things required of all citizens living here, things that didn’t get printed on line boards. And so in small, quiet ceremony, in the ripping down of a hundred thousand posters, honor had the honor of being our first Red Listed word. We woke the next morning to Safety First and We Don’t Want to Go Back to the Way Things Were, Do We?
The countryside is more beautiful than I remember, even like this. Bales of trash instead of baled-up hay. Abandoned farmhouses dotting the land like weeping sores. I can’t stand to see their burnt or age-worn structures, or their insides seeping out onto the unmowed lawns. I was born in the country, as were my best memories. I won’t desecrate them by noticing these shells of civilization zipping past my car windows. In fact, I’ll go faster. It’s unlikely Blue Coats will pick me up on the way to my break site anyway. They won’t be out patrolling in the heat, in the wastelands where nothing happens. They’ll come later when the Fatherboard sees I’ve gone rogue. It will be the most excitement they’ve had in months.
Maybe they won’t be carrying guns. Not all Blue Coats get them. Most guns are reserved for the brigade lined up outside the National House like dominoes. Tin soldiers in tidy rows, they flash weaponry used to guard President and his cabinet of Ministers. Keep people from considering assassination, keep those who try anyway from achieving their goal. Guns also go to police assigned to specific jobs. Hunting down runners and the quick dispatch of terrorists.
Aside from this ignoble guard, the largely gun-free system has flourished. Fists, elbows, knees, mouths, teeth, the fleshy weapons carried by men, the ones used to inflict more intimate punishments—these broadcast an absolute and terrifying power the business end of a pistol doesn’t match. When a Blue Coat exacts a punishment, scars are left and people see them.
I try not to think about the Blue Coats and what may happen to me if I’m caught. At least I will have finally stood up.
I’ve run in what I wore to the office. A white, long-sleeved linen blouse over a white camisole. A pair of gray tweed pants. Soft leather low-heeled shoes. This would have been so much easier in a T-shirt or a tank top. A pair of jeans, sneakers. From my understanding, the clothes I run in, I stay in for the better part of my training. It might prove stupid, not to have changed, but I’m a Monitor who’s just gotten off Red Watch. They would have noticed the clothes gone from my closet or sitting in a sloppy pile in the trunk of my car. They can break into anything they want in the name of security. My home, my vehicle, my computer, my neck. It’s how they protect us. From whom, I’ve long since stopped asking.
The sun is in full bloom above the cracked country road. Sweat beads on my brow, drops onto my cheek, runs down past my collar. It stings my slate, the silver identification module embedded in our necks almost as soon as we’re out of the womb. It’s barely visible above the skin, with just a line of silvery gray to collect Confederation downloads and provide access to where I am, where I’ve been, what I’ve said.
The slate is made of a material I don’t understand. The first prototypes, like mine, were refitted as an individual grew. Now they grow with us, like my daughter’s. Hers was implanted in her eighteenth month. Most children have theirs put in closer to age two, but she started talking early.
My slate has always itched and when I sweat like this, it feels like an infection. For years I’ve considered cutting it out, but it’s wrapped around the carotid in such a way that it’s impossible to remove without bleeding to death. Removing one’s slate is the number one method of suicide in the Confederation of the Willing. People who are completely sane in the morning are found at their kitchen tables at night, a cup of coffee in their left hand, a paring knife in their right. I can understand this madness. Especially if you’re older and have memories of the beforetime, like the farmers.
Most of us are younger than the event that divides our population. A quarter of us, probably fewer are well into our fifties or sixties, the survivors of a bacterial holocaust the likes of which mankind had never before seen. It took out whole continents. Almost half our nation’s population. I’m one of a very small percentage of children who made it through the Pandemic. I was alive and aware thirty-three years ago and have small memories of freedom.
I roll down the window and adjust the rearview mirror so I can see my face. My cheeks are flush with blood and my gray eyes look older than the rest of me. I have light brown hair that’s too long to be loose. It whips around my face and catches on my eyelashes.
“Goddamnit!” I shout into the wind. We can swear. A small privilege to keep us sane.
I tuck my hair beneath my collar and watch for the green road sign that will tell me I’m almost there. It comes up quick. I almost miss it, just like the note warned:
2050 North Province Rd., three miles southeast of Bond, East Bodland. Look for an old farmhouse, fire took out the barn. One white wall of siding is gone. Looks like your grandparents’ place used to with a long rocked drive and a big oak tree bending the road. Don’t miss the turn. Sign comes up quick on the backside of a hill.
I memorized each word.
My grandparents’ house was thirty-three years ago and a world away. Their front drive was a white river of rock hewn between mounds of wild prairie grass and the entrance to my favorite place in the world. Dim memories show me a dark-haired father who missed the entrance more than he found it and a blonde-headed mother awkwardly smiling back at me from the passenger seat. According to the government, I was four years old when the Pandemic came wheeling down our drive in a big Confederation truck and took us all away. It was the last time I saw the farm, or my family.
I hit a patch of cobbled earth and bounce in my seat. I’m topping a hundred and twenty miles an hour and can no longer see the ugly residue of crops as a set of rows. They’re now a haze of brown sludge sliding past my windows. The oak tree is ahead. I hit the brakes and turn the wheel toward the rocked drive, holding tight as the car fishtails on the loose gravel. I’m to the house before the dust trail can catch up. My legs are shaking when they hit the ground.
I’m Off Map now. They’ll be sending out a car.
I don’t remember making my way through the uneven earth to the screen door. But then I’m there, my hand on the knob, reading a bright yellow piece of paper that’s been posted to a broken pane of glass.
No trespassing as posted by the Confederation of the Willing and its representative Province of Bodland. This property has been devalued as a residence or place of business and is Off Map for any citizen. Entrance will be noted via your slate and penalties may include 102A, 102B, 217A, and/or 550.
A 550. I think about the punishment hiding behind that number. Jesus. I’d think about getting in my car and lighting out for somewhere less patently dangerous, but this was my assigned place. This was where my recruiter said I’m to meet my trainer. I tear the yellow warning off the door and let it fall out of my hand on the way in. Fuck ’em. The false bravado doesn’t make me feel better. I feel the false part more than the bravado.
The screen door leads to another that opens easily into a kitchen. There’s a round table inside with a couple of chairs, its laminate top barely visible beneath an inch of dust. A gray linoleum counter runs the length of the far wall, separating wooden cabinet doors below and above. Their pine panels have warped and most of them stand ajar, revealing empty interiors. There are no implements. No refrigerator. No glasses to run under the sink that’s sitting beneath a window. I can see other farm buildings through the thick panes. An abandoned corncrib made of cement with a rusting ladder running up one side. An old gasoline tank sitting atop a wooden crèche.
Deeper into the house, the air is so thick with the scent of decaying wood and carpet, I can hardly breathe. I pull my shirt over my nose and push aside cobwebs until I find a room with a bed.
“Oh, God.”
The comforter looks just like the one I slept under at my grandparents’ home, with pink flowers on a striped yellow backing. Except this one is duller, the material browned in large patches by years of unchecked damp. Maybe my recruiter put this here to soften my break. I’ve met him only once. He held me upright in an alley as I cried. I never saw his face. We didn’t speak. I don’t know the man’s name and he knows what comforter I slept under as a child. This is the way it is between the recruiter and the recruited. They study us for years, review the whole of our lives. By the time we meet, they either love us or hate us and we know nothing about them other than what we permit ourselves to imagine. And I have imagined my recruiter irrationally.
Despite my pragmatic nature, I’ve allotted him only the best qualities. Kindness. Humor. Honor. A desire to get to know me from the inside out, the same way I want to learn him. It’s a spiritual ache Pastor would call pornographic. The State would rather us focus on one another’s bodies and forget about the contents of our hearts and minds, but I don’t care. If I am a whore for fantasizing about this man’s character and desiring a more intimate, less desultory connection, I am a whore. The rest is available on any street corner, anytime, for very few credits per act.
I know, in the long run, such fantasies about my recruiter won’t serve me. But, until I meet him and have to deal with the reality of who and what he actually is, they give me something to hope for.
I dump the contents of my pockets onto the bed, taking stock of the room’s small closet. I’ve brought a picture, a roll of tape, and a handkerchief I tie around the knuckles of one hand. It’s completely without function, this red swatch of cotton, save for what it represents and the way it feels. The note suggested bringing something, anything, to help with the pain.
I pull off short segments of the tape and paste the picture to the underside of the closet’s doorframe, a good eighteen inches lower than the ceiling. I lie down beneath it, but there’s not enough light to see the girl’s eyes, so I get up again. Cross the room and yank open the window’s shade. A cloud of dust appears, floating for a few seconds in the bedroom air. Through it comes the first sun this room has seen for over thirty years.
I lie back down, faceup, eyes steady on the girl above me, my feet sticking out into the room. Try to calm myself with memories of my daughter. I think of her at age four. A fair-skinned child with wild, honey-colored hair that became a helmet of springs during bath time. I can see her perfectly. Pink-cheeked, chubby hands batting at the bubbles I’d make by pouring in a capful of dishwashing soap. Then, suddenly, she was nine, then ten, then no longer possessed a round belly or light-colored hair. Bath time was spent with me sitting on the floor talking to her through a pulled curtain, as there were now things to hide. Blushes of womanhood to be kept private.
The fear comes back and thoughts of my daughter are replaced with questions: Will it burn? Will I feel the metal breaking? Will I smell my flesh melting around it? I work my legs to dislodge these thoughts. Almost begin to scream and feel something cool pressing against my forehead.
Oh, Christ.
A wire hanger. I toss it across the room and feel around the closet for any others. Anything metal grounds the current. Pressed against my body, it would have ended this run here and now. I shake it off. Shut my eyes and pray.
God. Make your truth mine. Even my inner voice wavers. It doesn’t sound like the prayer I repeat silently every day. It sounds like something you say when you know you’re going to die. And I might. It’s a possibility.
Two syllables are all the Confederation needs in order to know if I’m trying to say something on the Red List. Then they stop it from coming, wiping away any other words that start with this sound. Either way, I’ll stay physically bound to my slate forever. It will stay put in my neck, working or not. A purposeless organ, like an appendix that shows. If this break works, it will be my daily reminder to be profound—a quality of speech considered sinful. These days, the less said, the better.
All regress begins as address, Pastor says. Meaning there is nothing more dangerous than the spoken word. When we try to articulate words that have been Red Listed, a noise cancellation device disintegrates the product of our voices as the slate shocks us into submission. If warranted, Blue Coats are then sent out to make sure the message was clear. This is what the slate does. It regulates our vocabulary. Contains us. Keeps us from harm. That’s what Pastor says.
This is what I have to do. Make a Red word audible. Repeat it over and over until one of us short-circuits. Just one word that, to me, means everything.
I look into the eyes above me, young and brown, a doe’s eyes in a girl’s face. “I love you.”
A premature tear slips down my cheek. I open my mouth and begin to scream.
“Vera—.” Two syllables escape, then nothing. Nothing but neural fire shooting through my jaws, boiling the fluid in my ears. I keep my eyes on the girl above me.
“ .” The shock is greater, matched by my effort.
My hands have started twitching. I squeeze the one holding the handkerchief. Try again.
“ .”
My head is splitting in two. My face already awash in tears.
“ .”
The feedback splices through my skin and whips down the length of my arms.
“ .”
God help me. I’m getting nowhere. The scent of burning hair is in my nostrils.
“ .”
My eyes blur. My hands have begun to clench and unclench as if I’m convulsing. I may be.
“. . .” It’s something. A tapping sound.
“. . . sssssssssssssssssssssssssssst-t-t-t . . .” The staccato of consonance. Like at the grocery store, when they’re about to announce someone’s lost child has been found.
“Sssssssss . . . ciiiiiit . . . yyyyyy!” The sounds slip through the air and fill the closet. I ignore the blistering heat in my throat and scream louder.
“Ffff . . . cccccccc . . . t-yyyyyyyy!”
“Fffvvvv . . . cccccccciiii . . . t-yyyyyyyy!”
“Vvvvvv . . . cccc . . . tyyyyyyy!” My voice sounds inhuman, like an android short-circuiting.
“Vrrrreeeee . . . rrrrrr . . . ccccccciiiityyy!”
She’s smiling at me now from her perch on the ceiling. Do this, Mommy. Finish this.
I swallow the last of my fear and scream, “VVEERRAAAC-CIIITYY!” It is my voice in full. Raw and ripped—but mine, a voice combined with a cracking, snapping spark. A flash of orange appears beneath my chin. It buckles beneath my jaw.
“VERACITY!” There is no more pain. I whisper, making sure: “Veracity.” It was my daughter’s name. My daughter, called by the name they took from her.
The corners of my closet world fold inward. Veracity reaches down and runs her hands over my face. I fall away. She goes with me. I can smell her, tell how much she’s grown and in not so long a time. She’s over five feet tall now; I’ve seen her like this in my dreams. Her hair is long and thick, her body’s beginning to curve.
God help her, she’s no longer a little girl.
Reading Group Guide
V E R A C I T Y: Reading Group Guide
Overview:
It is the near distant future in a country that used to resemble America. In response to a Pandemic that occurred thirty years prior, the government has taken control over every aspect of a citizen’s life: where they live, where they go, what they say, who they love. By in large, the populace
has accepted this shift from freedom to security. Basic needs have been provided for via state-managed sex, the anesthetizing drug Occlusia, and a mandated, yet stable, workforce. It is a country no longer run by the people or for the people but over the people. It is a totalitarian regime in which art, nature and all other things that threaten to transcend a forced resignation have been banned.
Topics of Interest Questions:
The resistance operates on the principle that an educated populace will not stand for the continuation of a totalitarian state. Do you agree? Why or why not?
If Harper’s sentient abilities are the opposite of critical thinking, why is she so important to the resistance?
What kind of power does the control of language provide the government?
How does not being able to identify a thing via language inhibit a person’s ability to process it?
Why did the government choose to name itself The Confederation of the Willing?
To keep the masses in lockstep, the government has provided them such placebos as state-paid sex and medication. What pains do these placebos mask and what would happen if they were taken away?
Security versus freedom. Which is more important? Discuss what the loss of either would mean to you, the country, and the planet.
In addition to language, the following has been largely banned by the Confederation of the Willing: nature, art, religious freedom, and civil rights. Why?
What would happen if access to any or all of these were legal?
Precedent. What does this word mean, in both literal and applicable terms? For example, how does something that seems to be a positive step in the now open the doors to something dangerous down the road? Why should all legislative actions be considered for both their immediate and long-term possibilities?
In the Confederation, when a crime is committed, a corresponding punishment ensues. What does the absence of a jury or a system of further inquiry portend?
The church has become an extension of the government. It is the very thing that prompted our forefathers to make the first amendment one that separates church and state. How has the marriage of these two given Confederation leaders an easy path to power?
During the Pandemic, the populace is inexplicably motivated to follow along with the government’s excavation of their former country. Why?
Media plays a huge part in the government’s control. How?
Why is it important for Lazarus to present The Book of Noah to the country?
What might the information contained within this book awaken in citizens?
Harper has lived in a world of conflicting ideals nearly her entire life. What inspires her to accept the invitation to become a member of the resistance?
The Confederation of the Willing has spread the idea that Christ was not persecuted. According to their story, “He came into the world recognized and was ceded all power. No struggle required.” How does this interpretation fit their agenda?
What is the difference between fact and opinion? How do you recognize one from the other? How do you think this difference is manipulated in the new marketing, etc.?
The Confederation of the Willing uses emotional manipulation to secure its citizens’ regard. Do you see this technique in use today? Does hate play a large role in modern news and media?
In the beforetime, the fewer adjectives and adverbs in a news story, the more likely it was to be straight facts, unprejudiced by emotion or bias. How do the reports coming out of the Confederation provide an insight into their motivation? How does this compare to today’s news?
Character Questions:
Why does Harper have such a hard time accepting Ezra?
Why does Ezra harbor such resentment for Harper?
Harper has envisioned John Gage as things he could never possibly be. Why?
Despite Lazarus’s good intentions, was Rita’s rescue from the Confederation the right thing to do?
Interviews
An Interview with Laura Bynum
Where did you get the idea for this book?
It came to me shortly after the 9/11 tragedy. There was an exchange of rights for the promise of security that I found terrifying. But what bothered me more than that was the ease with which this exchange occurred. Rights were required and, without much fuss, surrendered.
There was also a huge re-branding of popular language going on. Words that used to mean one thing suddenly meant something else. For example, patriotism became not questioning authority. Opinion became kin to fact. It's not that this trend away from hard news hadn't already begun, but it seemed this tragic event sent us hurtling toward "news" that was mostly opinion and prognostication, with just a sprinkling of facts thrown in for good measure.
I was jogging in the park one day, thinking about all this, and the idea for Veracity dropped into my head, full-stop. I think it's a great story but it also provides me a way to, hopefully, wake people up about where our power begins and ends, and I believe that's with the word.
Have you always been fascinated by the use and power of language?
Always. Even as a little girl. Especially as a little girl. I never understood why people said one thing while obviously meaning another, or why they didn't come right out and say what they wanted instead of hinting around at it. Despite making it my main study in life, I'm still not very good at getting that part of communication that lives in the gray zone. I'm more literate in black and white.
There were events that heightened my interest. One of the most pivotal happened a little over a decade ago. My sister had a stroke at the age of 26 and lost her ability to speak. She could swear like a sailor, mostly because expletives are pure emotion, a response to frustration with not so much thinking required. As my sister began to relearn language, she became eloquent in a very unique way. Trying to say the most mundane thing, she'd produce these beautiful little poems. For example, when my mom was diagnosed with anemia, my sister, who didn't have the more literal words, told me, "Her blood was crying." Experiencing that learning process secondhand really reminded me of how amazing and multifaceted it is, but also how open this process of filtering truth is to abuse.
Harper is a realistic, yet courageous protagonist. In a similar situation, do you think you would have Harper's courage? Are there any character traits that you share with her? Is there another character in the book whom you relate to more?
Harper (named for Nell Harper Lee, who wrote one of my favorite books, To Kill a Mockingbird) is the me I'd like to be 24/7. It's a hell of a choice Harper has to make: keep her daughter "safe" in a miserable, prescribed life, or risk losing everything to provide her a chance at true joy, which I believe is having the freedom to live by your own measure and according to the mandates of your own heart. Of answering to yourself and to God and that's pretty much it. I think a lot of how I identify with Harper is through our relationships with our daughters, and I'm pretty confident I'd make the same choice.
To me, the character of Veracity is my oldest daughter, whose father I divorced a little over a week before she was born. It was just my daughter and me for the first four years of her life. We went through some very hard things together, not just in the beginning, but also in this last year when I had to have radiation for breast cancer and she had to become a Harper of sorts herself and take charge for a period of months while I recuperated from complications. We are kind of a Harper-Veracity loop, my daughter and I. So much so that when I do a reading of the first chapter of Veracity, I have a very hard time getting through it without misting up. As it is with Harper, my children are what keep me pushing forward.
I definitely identify the most with Harper, but I've scattered a few of my characteristics throughout many of the others. I share Ezra's intolerance of hypocrisy. With Lazarus, I share a love of truth, and bad joints. With Mr. Weigland, a sensitive heart. With Lilly and Noam, a love of words.
What is the primary message you hope that Veracity imparts to readers?
That we have to take responsibility for our consumption of truth, and that means about everything. We have to -- each and every one of us -- go on our own personal hero journey and look into our own hearts to see how and why we've defined ourselves the ways we have. After giving birth to my twins, I decided to finally do that legwork. Along with a friend, I studied the American government and got to know my rights, and also did a study of world religions. I examined my own heart to see if what I'd been espousing myself to be was actually what I was, and there was a little shifting to be done. But I was then prepared to discuss issues from an educated perspective. We have to become critical thinkers in order to tell the world who we are instead of being told by the world what we like, what we hate, what we want, etc.
Clearly censorship is an important issue for you. Have you had any personal experience with being censored or constrained from expressing yourself?
My own personal experiences with censorship are many but, for the most part, have been surmountable. But there is one issue of censorship I experience only secondarily, and yet feel is the most egregious of our generation and that's the fight for equal rights for members of the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) community. The long and short of it is that people should be able to love whomever is in their heart without punishment and with impunity. Their rights shouldn't be restricted, period. This is an excellent example of the censorship of the word; if we called this oppressive behavior what it actually is -- homophobia -- we'd get far fewer people actively and openly subscribing to this intolerance, and maybe we'd see justice done.
Who are your favorite authors? Did any of them have an influence as you were writing this novel?
I have many, many favorites and I'm absolutely going to leave some out. With that being said, here are the ones in my head right now: Toni Morrison, John Steinbeck, Elizabeth Strout, Ann Patchett, Maya Angelou, Audrey Niffenegger, Tom Wolfe, Dan Simmons, C. S. Lewis, John Irving, Margaret Atwood, Chinua Achebe, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, and many more.
There are so many authors who've shaped my story and style and who've encouraged me with the beauty of their own words. All of them have influenced me, but there is one poem I read over and over again when I question this path and need a little reminder to have faith in both my decision, and my process: Mary Oliver's "The Wild Geese."
What are you working on now?
My second novel is a love story -- a sort of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, but with a twist. As with Veracity, it's also very much about communication. Specifically, with how often proximity has nothing to do with closeness, and how the love we make, we make with our souls first and our bodies second. It juxtaposes what we've been taught is love with actual love. The distance revealed between these two, for some, might be surprising.
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