Somewhere in a Texan’s alternative universe, Al Gore won the 2000 election and we’re 20 years into a War on Climate Change rather than the War on Terror. But then as now, Texas ain’t utopia and certain neighborhoods and people tend to get left out of the green revolution. Welcome to the “ripped from the headlines climate fiction story based on real-life activism” by Houston author Sim Kern.
Kern’s The Free People’s Village (Sept. 12, Levine Querido and distributed by Chronicle Books, LLC) draws from Kern’s own experience as a teacher in Houston public schools, their activism with Occupy Houston, as well as the present-day Stop I-45 movement. But The Free People’s Village takes place in an alternate 2020 timeline, where a supermajority of Democrats have passed sweeping climate regulation, transforming the country into a “solarpunk utopia”—but only for wealthy, white neighborhoods.
