Karen East imagines a near-future America where Homeland Security monitors phone calls, rewrites the news, and treats dissent as a threat to be managed.
-- In her debut novel, Sanctuary, East weaves the story of a woman fleeing danger with that of a family whose Indigenous teachings offer a distinct vision of how to live. At the center of the novel is Rachel Anderson, a lifelong activist and domestic violence survivor who becomes a social worker, spending her career fighting for women trapped in dangerous marriages—and drawing the FBI’s scrutiny in the process. When a fog-shrouded drive north to a new home in Hayward, Wisconsin, fails to dispel her sense that she is still being watched, Rachel’s search for safety becomes a central source of the novel’s suspense.
A second narrative strand follows Janet, a young journalist navigating a newsroom where reporters are forbidden from interviewing the accused and opinion pages are treated as dangerous. Alongside Janet’s story is that of Joe, an Ojibwe elder whose family has passed down teachings about the Creator, the Spirit World, and humanity’s responsibility to Mother Earth. Through Joe and the family matriarch known simply as Old Woman, East introduces a historical strand set in 1969, when a younger Joe wrestles with whether to join a movement demanding the reclamation of Native land and rights. He must weigh armed resistance against a philosophy of patience, honor, and stewardship passed down through generations of his people.
The result is a novel that moves between genres as fluidly as it moves between decades: a suspense narrative shaped by surveillance and political control; a historical story of Indigenous resistance, identity, and cultural continuity; and a meditation on the knowledge—expressed through dreams, visions, and a deep respect for the natural world—that offers its characters an alternative to the fear and division surrounding them. Rather than treating these elements as separate stories, East uses their intersections to explore competing ideas about power, survival, community, and the meaning of safety.
Karen East is a retired marriage and family therapist. She spent nineteen years working with American Indian tribes across the Midwest, an experience that informs her depiction of Indigenous family and community life in the novel. She lives in northern Wisconsin, where much of the novel is set.
Sanctuary is available through Amazon and other major online bookstores.
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