Hope is rooted in Hannah’s resilient spirit and strength of character. Dale’s comfort and torture are his faith. Hannah, though outcast, has the company of other outcasts. Dale also experiences hell, different from Hannah’s but seemingly no less painful.

Though the outside world is rife with challenges, the greatest shackles are those of shame and grief, self-imposed. As her location and communications are constantly monitored, she is unable to contact Dale. Her only reliable family tie is to her father. The impossibility of reconciliation is a recurring theme. Chromes are segregated by neighborhood, barred from many establishments and always viewed with suspicion. Upon her release, Hannah must make her way in a world that much resembles one governed by Jim Crow laws. Punishment was meted out in other ways: in increments of solitude, monotony and, harshest of all, self-reflection, both figurative and literal.” Hannah spends her first month in a Chrome ward, in solitary confinement to a room where temperature “was precisely calculated to keep her comfortable. Yellows are those convicted of misdemeanors, Blues are child molesters. Melachroming is society’s answer to crime, essentially a public branding through the genetic alteration of skin color. The result is a world in which personal liberties are curtailed and the punishment for transgression is harsh. Wade was overturned, and 40 states passed “sanctity of life” legislation. In its wake, birth rates dropped catastrophically, Roe vs. “The Great Scourge” arrived when Hannah was 11, a sexually transmitted disease that rendered many women sterile.

She works as a seamstress of bridal finery by day, but at night sneaks back to the studio to sew and wear clothes of which her religion would never approve.

The role chafes on a young woman whose nature is to question. Her life revolved around “the twin nuclei of her family and the church” she wears modest clothing, high-necked and calf-length, and is raised to be compliant and subservient. Hannah Payne (Hester Prynne) is the child of an evangelical family. The result, “When She Woke,” is as compulsively readable as it is thought-provoking. She takes the seeds of that story and roots them in a world where “right to life” is the law of the land, and abortion is a felony. “The Scarlet Letter” could unfurl from no better a speculative pen than that held by Hillary Jordan. When She Woke by Hillary Jordan (Algonquin Books) Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close Menu

When she woke book review