Reviewed by Jeffrey Condran

Kayla Kellerman is a gifted introvert from a loving Pennsylvania family. Her scientist father and poet mother have taught her the humanist values that have guided their lives to a place of happiness and fulfillment. Not least among these is the desire to empathize even with people who treat you badly. For Kayla, a math prodigy who has her own dreamy way of interacting with the world, this empathy is most often understood through various “theories of time” as they touch upon her experience with people: “the notion that the moment is all that’s real, a knife’s edge of action and consequence, our futures unknowable, our pasts set in stone.” To live and think in the moment, while sometimes dangerous, also creates the possibility for compassion. It is a way to forgive people their trespasses. This is especially needed—and in short supply—in the alternate version of America that Curtis Smith has created in his remarkable new novel, The Magpie’s Return.

In fact, Smith’s America is a world gone mad. Nuclear war overseas leads to the emergence—and victory—of Arthur McNally’s Reform Party, whose neo-fascist platform Holy America, One America advocates a violent return to white supremacy, traditional gender roles, and evangelical Christianity. Their flag is a reimagining of the symbolism of Nazi Germany, the red background with a white circle, the swastika replaced with a cross. The slogan coming from their newly formed Bureau of Culture and Tradition is “PURITY.” The concept’s political history, obvious to some but completely foreign to many, is laid out carefully for those who would join the new world order by a man named Slater, the Kellermans’ neighbor and a Reform Party loyalist:

I was in chemistry class, and we were conducting an experiment. We held a crucible over a flame. The powder inside bubbled and smoked. . . . The smell wasn’t pleasant, but in the end, we were left with a beautiful silver liquid, a substance so shiny it actually glowed. What we’d done was burn off the impurities. The filth. What we were left with was a substance purged of contaminants. A substance that was pure.

Set in opposition to this new political reality is The Movement, a loose collective of moderates and liberals who argue against the practices of the new regime. They believe at the beginning, erroneously it turns out, that there is a rhetorical solution to the growing divide between Americans. Their neighbors, the cultural conservatives with whom they’ve been sharing their communities, can be reasoned with. Certainly, they argue, no one wants bloodshed. Kayla’s father has joined The Movement, and his regular posts have brought him notoriety. They’ve also drawn the attention of the Reform Party. Without revealing too much of the plot, suffice it to say that violent action is taken against the Kellermans for their involvement with the opposition. Examining all that’s happened to the country and her family, Kayla feels they shouldn’t have been so naïve about human nature:

No, Dad, the things we needed to fear lived next door. We breathed the same air in the supermarket lines and darkened movie theaters. They idled next to us at red-light intersections, their windows rolled up, their radios turned to preachers of a different truth. What we had to fear wasn’t a drifting toxin but the kind of poison that burrows deep into one’s heart, and I love you Dad, but how could you have not seen that?

All of this is only prelude, however, to the real story of The Magpie’s Return. With her family either dead or imprisoned, Kayla is taken to a place called the Girls’ Center, an institution for young women of both political backgrounds that provides shelter and education for those whose parents have been affected by violence. They have become wards of the state. The Center is underfunded and understaffed and largely used as a vehicle to reeducate the young with Reform Party values. It’s not a happy place for anyone, but the girls are segregated based on their families’ political affiliation, giving the place a violent charge that quickly descends into a kind of Lord of the Flies scenario. Smith’s writing up until this point is compelling, especially in the development of Kayla’s character and the ways he shows the Kellermans’ tender family relationship. However, in the sections of the novel dedicated to the Girls’ Center, the prose really begins to shine. Not only does the plot continue at its dynamic pace, but another layer of texture develops, possibly owing to the fact that Smith spent decades teaching in Pennsylvania’s public schools. He is especially good at developing the friendships among the girls and showing Kayla’s transformation from victim into a formidable young woman.

With this in mind, it would be a mistake to read Smith’s novel only as political allegory. There is a wonderful, page-turning quality here that pulls the reader along and compels us to empathize with the physical and emotional trauma of Kayla’s journey. Nevertheless, The Magpie’s Return provides a vision of just how easily democracies can fail when citizens fall prey to their worst instincts. While not for the faint of heart, there couldn’t be a more timely fiction on offer this year.