True, I Did Set It in Wyoming, Not Illinois
I began writing The Price of Liberty while George W. Bush was still in office and war profiteering was still front-page news. Since the banking meltdown, however, the nation’s attention has turned from corporate malfeasance to more immediate concerns. And Afghanistan and Iraq still make the news, but the endless endgame of the “War on Terror” has become an abstraction or even background noise to Americans worried about their jobs and pocketbooks.
After the election of Barack Obama, as half the nation celebrated the dawning of a new era, there were times when I thought about abandoning my novel out of fear that it would soon seem out-of-date. But even though a new administration can quickly change the tone, actual change is harder to accomplish. Old contracts must still be honored, old appointees must be replaced, old business drags on and on. A promise to close Guantanamo isn’t as easy to deliver as it seemed. Political resistance aside, a proper location must be found (”Illinois the Next Gitmo?” by Christi Parsons, Chicago Tribune).
A near-empty prison in rural Illinois has emerged as “a leading option” to house suspected terrorists currently held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, an Obama administration official said Friday.
Suddenly, my novel about a prison for terrorists in the American heartland doesn’t seem so eighteen-months-ago anymore.