Lady Liberty walks across the United States helping the homeless disappear. Patriot holds a force field in place in Boston that will protect the whole country. In a reimagined America, the deepest American ideals-Freedom, Patriotism, Independence-are gods "helping" shape the best nation in the world. They only ask to be respected, worshippedp and thanked for what they've done. City Halls are churches. High school History tests become acts of Faith, and if you fail them, you are transformed into something useful-like a bridge, sports centre, or missile. The Chamber of Commerce is dependent on sinners, recasting failure as civic pride. Celia Greenwood will fail history, and lose her life-unless she escapes to Canada. With her younger brother, Danny, they travel north by train, boat and bus, like a darker Huckleberry Finn, seeking help from fellow Americans, exposing the dangerous negotiations and compromises we make to live free.

Jerome Stueart's profile page

Jerome Stueart was born in the US, the son of a West Texas Southern Baptist Minister. His work has appeared in Fantasy, Strange Horizons, Geist, On Spec, Joyland, Geez, Lightspeed's Queers Destroy Science Fiction, Icarus, Queerwolf and other journals and magazines, as well as three of the Tesseracts anthology series of Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy (Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing). His work was runner up to the 2005 Fountain Award and honorable mention for Year's Best Science Fiction in 2006. He is a proud graduate of Clarion San Diego, 2007. He's written and coproduced five radio series for CBC, one of which was heard round the world on RCI. He was an editor of Tesseracts 18: Wrestling with Gods and is also coeditor of ChiZine's Imaginarium 4. He moved to Canada's Yukon Territory and lived for nearly 10 years, becoming a Canadian citizen, before moving south to be with a bear in Dayton, Ohio,&nbspwhich Advocate Magazine calls the 2015 Queerest City in America. Learn more about Jerome at his website: www.jeromestueart.com