Margaret Atwood's "The Testaments": It's The Right Time & The Place For A Shocking Revelation of Dystopian Theocracy

For those of us who live in certain states here in America - Utah, Colorado and Arizona -  this Canadian fiction novelist's sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, published in  1984. Her new book opens a testimony with a perspective that has historical precedent here, both about patriarchy and the pitfalls when a culture morphs into a theocracy.
Atwood has been called "a prophet".

This is the right time and the right place for the release of her new novel now.
Why?
In a recent ruling from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals against the patterns and practices of what's conveniently called "a cult" here in Colorado City, Arizona - the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of The Latter-Day Saints that the FBI has been investigating for years.
Words of fiction, however, allow us to grapple with the reality of remnants of polygamy: multiple-wives who still call themselves "sisters" is just one manifestation, while the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals also found that culture controlled nearly everything: they determined who got elected to be mayor and who got elected to the city council. They also dominated the police and fire departments.
Atwood's novel doesn't go there in a legalistic sense. Nonetheless it reverberates deeply in current American political moments that somehow all up over time. It's a milestone.
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Published on Sep 9, 2019

“The Testaments" is the greatly anticipated sequel to Margaret Atwood’s hit dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Though it’s fiction, Atwood says she doesn't "put anything in that doesn’t have a precedent in human history.” Jeffrey Brown spoke with Atwood recently about how the current American political moment affected her decision to write the sequel, more than 30 years after “Handmaid.”

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