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Hi, I'm the author of this book, and I hope you liked it. As a former journalist, I wanted a reporter protagonist who could solve problems. Mac came into being, based on my reporting experiences as well as others, coupled with the military experiences of a former student turned journalist. This is the third book in the series. You can find the first two, Trust No One and In God’s Name at your usual e-publishing site.
In 2016, I, like a lot of people, was stunned by Donald Trump taking the presidency. The fact he was opposed by most American voters was no comfort. Some 63 million voters had voted for him. In spite of his incompetency, in spite of his racism and misogyny. Or maybe because of it. They were sending a clear message, I thought bitterly: any white man, no matter how incompetent and mediocre, was preferable to a Black man or to a woman.
I’d worked in diversity activism for a long time. I’d been a reporter in some pretty racist parts of the country. And I would have guessed that 15-25 percent of the country were like that. Many of them were people I grew up with. My liberal friends thought I was exaggerating the threat.
Turned out, it’s closer to 35 percent of Americans who feel like that. (Feel free to argue with me. I can be found on Twitter at @ljbreedlove, and I’m happy to discuss politics there!)
You know who weren’t surprised? Black people. Native Americans. Latinos. LGBTQ people. Immigrants. They knew. They all knew. Americans are like that.
Hell, even Lyndon B. Johnson knew: "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." (1960)
And so, I set out to find out what did we know back in say, 2014? Could we have seen this coming?
I checked in with some scholars who study the rise of white supremacy, militia’s and anti-government rhetoric. I asked, could we have known in 2014?
Their answer? We did know in 2014. We’ve known since 2008. The FBI knew. Homeland Security knew. Nobody wanted to listen to the experts. No one wanted to listen to people of color, to all the people marginalized because they weren’t straight, white Christian men and the women they’re married to.
I finished the first draft of this not long after armed white supremacists took a Confederate flag into the U.S. Capitol because they thought Trump wanted them to overthrow Congress to “Stop the Steal.”
You may read this book as an answer for my own lack of realization of how large the problem is, or you may choose to see it as another Mac Davis thriller and read it for that. I hope you liked it either way.
If you did like the book, please write a review at your favorite e-book retailer. Or put in a good word for the book on your Facebook page or other social media site. E-publishing works because people sing out when they find books they like. Reviews don't have to be lengthy. Two lines about what you thought will be much appreciated.
I have more books! Look for them at your favorite e-book retailer, or sign up for my newsletter, Telling Stories, and you will get the first announcement of future books, and a few other things. Claim your free short story as a signing bonus.
You can visit my website, ljbreedlove.com where I blog about my books, but also about the books I like to read and the writing process. I hope you'll join me there. You can also find me at @ljbreedlove on Twitter, where I focus mostly on politics, and on Facebook at LJBreedlove.
Thanks again for reading.
L.J. Breedlove
P.S. CLICK THE IMAGE above to subscribe to Telling Stories newsletter. Get a Mac short story as a signing bonus. See you there.