In the new summer novel "The Peacekeeper," writer B.L. Blanchard, an enrolled member of the Sault Ste. Maria Tribe of Chippewa Indians, envisions a North America that was never colonized by white Europeans. Indigenous people still have their land, and the U.S. and Canada never existed. Police don't exist, either.
Alternative history, a genre of speculative fiction where certain historical events happen differently from how they did in real life, is an evocative place to set a story. TV shows from "The Man in the High Castle," based on the Philip K. Dick novel where the Axis powers win World War II, to "Motherland: Fort Salem," where witches are part of the American military, have made use of this device.
