And West is West - Ron Childress

Algonquin Books, October 13, 2015.

Four Stars

And West is West is the most recent winner of the PEN/Bellwether Prize for socially engaged fiction, and I think it is well deserved. Childress’s novel is a powerful comment on the use of technology in all aspects of our lives today, from high finance to tactical warfare – it also illustrates how this technology protects us from the immediate consequences of our actions, allowing people to make decisions from a distance that may come back to haunt them later.

Jessica is an Airforce drone pilot who must follow orders to launch a missile at a suspected terrorist – but in the process she knowingly kills several civilians. Unable to live with her actions, Jessica sabotages her military career by writing top secret information to her father in prison, leading to a general discharge. Lost without the military structure, Jessica goes off the grid – and discovers that she will not be permitted to leave quietly because she knows too much.

Meanwhile, Ethan is a “quant” at a huge American bank, crunching numbers and creating algorithms that turn wars and terror attacks into profit for his investors. After a misplaced decimal point loses billions of dollars, Ethan is fired from his job and, like Jessica, cast out by a system that has failed him and many others. He ends up on a cross-country journey of accidental self-discovery which intersects with Jessica’s new path in unexpected ways.

Childress writes about how small actions can have huge consequences that reverberate around the world. Jessica and Ethan are both products of a corrupt system, blamed for decisions that were forced on them by the current socio-political climate. The novel is scary because it is so realistic and topical. The plot is intriguing, exposing the dark and gritty side of our political and economic systems – the side that is usually sanitized for the public.

The characters are strongly written, including the minor ones – I was pulled right into their lives. Their inner conflicts are raw and exposed, as they explore their own consciences. While Jessica carries the blame for the “collateral damage” she caused, it is really the responsibility of all people who not only support war but also those that are ambivalent about current events. In contrast, Ethan is willing to look away to preserve his quality of life, and his ambivalence is a product of the distancing effect of technology.

When we rely on computers to make all of our decisions, there is no longer a moral compass to guide us. Surprisingly, the most morally thoughtful and analytical character in the novel is Jessica’s convict father, Don, whose letters punctuate the story with philosophical reflections about the nature of the world. As his letters follow Jessica’s flight across country, the pacing of the novel speeds up and consequences become inevitable. Jessica and Ethan struggle to regain agency over their own lives, accepting and processing the decisions they made in the past.

The novel is filled with witty, quippy, realistic descriptions of life in a security state, in a constant state of war. The language brings the novel from political thriller to literary fiction with lines such as this: “She just knows too many damn things. She’s a risk to the security of the security state, to the state of things as they are, to the status quo of war.” (Loc. 2086)

I received this book for free from Algonquin Books and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.