- Bracken, Matthew.
Domestic Enemies.
Orange Park, FL: Steelcutter Publishing, 2006.
ISBN 978-0-9728310-2-4.
-
This is the second novel in the author's “Enemies”
trilogy, which began with
Enemies Foreign and Domestic (EFAD)
(December 2009). In
After America (August 2011)
Mark Steyn argues that if present trends continue (and
that's the way to bet), within the lives of those
now entering the workforce in the United States (or, at least
attempting to do so, given the parlous state of the economy)
what their parents called the “American dream”
will have been extinguished and turned into a nightmare along
the lines of Latin American authoritarian states: bifurcation of
the society into a small, wealthy élite within their
walled and gated communities and impoverished masses living
in squalor and gang-ruled “no go” zones where
civil society has collapsed.
This book picks up the story six years after the conclusion of
EFAD. Ranya Bardiwell has foolishly attempted to return to the
United States and been apprehended and sent to a detention and
labour camp, her son taken from her at birth. When she manages
to escape from the camp, she tracks down her son as having been
given for adoption to the family of an FBI agent in New Mexico,
and following the trail she becomes embroiled in the seething
political storm of Nuevo Mexico,
where separatist forces have taken power and seized upon the
weakness of the Washington regime to advance their agenda of
rolling back the
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
and creating a nation of
“Aztlan”
from the territories ceded by Mexico in that treaty.
As the story progresses, we see the endpoint of the
reconquista in
New Mexico, Los Angeles, and San Diego, and how
opportunistic players on all sides seek to exploit
the chaos and plunder the dwindling wealth of the dying
empire for themselves. I'm not going to get into the
plot or characters because almost anything I say would
be a spoiler and this story does not deserve to be
spoilt—it should be savoured. I consider it
to be completely plausible—in the aftermath
of a financial collapse and breakdown of central authority,
the consequences of mass illegal immigration, “diversity”,
and “multiculturalism” could, and indeed will
likely lead to the kind of outcome sketched here. I found only
one technical quibble in the entire novel (a turbine-powered
plane “coughing and belching before catching”),
but that's just worth a chuckle and doesn't detract in any
way from the story. This the first thriller I recall reading
in which a precocious five year old plays a central part in
the story in a perfectly believable way, and told from his
own perspective.
This book is perfectly accessible if read stand-alone, but I strongly
recommend reading EFAD first—it not only
sets the stage for the mid-collapse America in which this
story plays out, but also provides the back story for Ranya
Bardiwell and Bob Bullard who figure so prominently here.
Extended
excerpts
of this and the author's other novels are available online at the
author's Web site.
March 2012 