Over the past year, I have been participating in a local book club. Even though I have not been able to make all of the events, I have still read the novels, and this year I read some books that I may not have read if it were not for the book club. One of these books was Judy Blume’s Wifey, “an adult novel” that Blume published in the 1970s. As a kid, I read her children’s books, but nothing like Wifey. Another book was Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic, a book I had been wanting to read but never got around to doing so until the book club. The final book for this year was Silas House’s Lark Ascending, again a book I had seen around and thought about reading. House’s book, more than the other two, really hit home, especially in this moment.

Lark Ascending is, for lack of a better term, a post-apocalyptic novel. It begins with Lark and his family on a boat in the Atlantic as they flee the United States and seek refuge in Ireland, one of the last countries on the planet accepting refugees. They flee because the United States has collapsed due to the impacts of climate change and to the rise of fundamentalist Christian fascists who have seized power, imposing their beliefs and will on the populace. This latter aspect stand out to me because, as we have seen over the past few years, the rise in Christian fascism has wrought violence, fear, and oppression.

In the novel, we never see the downfall of the United States. We only see the aftermath. We never see the fundamentalists (Fundies) take control. We only see the destruction they leave in their wake. However, we do hear about the Slaughters and the purges when Lark’s parents tell him about it. Lark’s father tells him about his aunt and her wife who had gotten married before the downfall and when the Fundies took over they took the couple away, and no one ever saw them again. His parents told him:

The priests and professors and artists were killed in the Slaughters, too. The Fundies were in control now and they and anyone who defied them disappeared like my aunts. The Fundies always had excuses: they weren’t taken away or killed because of who they were or what they believed in or who they loved. Instead we were told they had been caught making bombs, or destroying property during protests. We were told they were convicted of treason, jailed for stealing, for any reason except the real ones.

The Fundies take their beliefs and create a theocracy where anyone who disagrees with them gets attacked, killed, or taken away. So, individuals flee to the wilderness to escape detection, living in rural areas of the nation. Lark and his family, along with a mother and her two children, end up in Maine for years, creating a community before Lark’s family flees for Ireland.

During their time in Maine, Lark and Arlo, the woman’s son, start a relationship, and the adults become fearful of what will happen if others, oustide of their community, find out. They fear that what happened to Lark’s aunts will happen to them, that they will be taken away and never heard from again. Yet, while they fear this, they also nurture Lark and Arlo’s relationship, knowing that the two love another. Lark and Arlo get their own dwelling and become, for all intents and purposes, a married couple like Lark’s aunts.

All of this may feel farfetched, like it could never happen in reality; however, we have seen moves for just such acts to take place. We see it with the Supreme Court poised to uphold Tennessee’s ban on gender affirming care for minors, which would uphold the bans in place in 26 other states. We see it in the oppression of Sarah McBride, the first transgender individual in congress, when Nancy Mace introduced legislation to ban transgender women from using women’s facilities on federal property. We see it with the Supreme Court’s telegraphing that they want to overturn Obergefell. All of these moves target a minority of the populace, but that happens, as we have see in other places, to pave the way for targeting larger swaths of those who dissent.

Later in the novel, Lark teams up with a woman named Helen in Ireland. Helen tells Lark about how they “danced in the streets of Cork” when gay marriage became legal; however, those gains went away with the zealots took over, moving everything backwards. As Helen says, “History repeats itself.” She continues by telling Lark, “Zealots are always ready to take over. No one ever thought it could happen here, but we are overestimating human beings. Turns out it’s easy to convert more people to a cause that takes power from others, that thrives on meanness.”

Fear, as we know, serves as combustible fuel for power. Throw fear into a crowd and the crowd erupts, targeting one another while ignoring the instigator who doused them in kerosene. The thrower sits aloft, staring down at the chaos they created, hoping that the populace, in their blind fear and rage, tears each other apart while ignoring the person who positioned them against one another. Near the end of the novel, following the death of Ronan, we see the impetus behind this tactic. Lark says,

The only thing I knew for sure that day was that many circumstances — mostly the actions of those in power — had led to that moment and a million others just like it. Everyone who benefitted from devastating the natural world. Everyone who participated in the misinformation and disinformation that led to my country’s collapse. Everyone who gained power or money from war. Ronan’s death was a complete waste of someone who could have possibly lived much longer and better. I had never seen the girl so much as smile, but she was a human being, and because of that, I like to think that she had the possibility of joy within her.

Lark kills Ronan because Ronan tries to attack him and Helen, but Lark does not blame Ronan for her actions. Instead, he points the blame where it belongs, on those in power who used their position to profit themselves while fueling hatred amongst those beneath them. This led to Ronan’s death, and Ronan’s death snuffed out a “human being,” a person just like Lark, just like Helen, just like you, just like me.

We never see those who killed Ronan. They exist off the page, in the stories that Lark’s parents tell him or that Helen tells him. Yet, they exist, causing the violence and destruction that Lark and others experience. In their desire to acquire as much power and wealth as possible, they pit individuals against individuals, using them as weapons to control their positions.

Lark Ascending, like Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents or Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here or George Orwell’s 1984, serves as a warning, as a cry in the wilderness, about what happens when the desire for power outweighs the desire for connection and humanity. Home is connection. Home is community. Home is shared humanity. Lark doesn’t blame Ronan because he sees her as human, just like himself. When we seek to take power from others, to strip them of their humanity, we strip ourselves of our very beings as well.

What are your thoughts? As always, let me know in the comments below. Make sure to follow me on Bluesky @silaslapham.