The year is 2016. I’m a mom of three elementary / middle school aged kids and a resident of Cincinnati, OH. I’m dropping the kids off at school when I notice parents congregating, their voices hushed as if they don’t want the kids to overhear.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Otto Warmbier is in a North Korean prison camp,” they said.
My gut hit my toes. Otto had been my kids’ swim team coach as a high school, then college student. He was dedicated, fun, and skilled. And Otto died in that North Korean prison in 2017, his mind and spirit broken by a murderous regime.
At the time, I was knee-deep in an early draft of Divided, my young adult dystopian fiction series which releases beginning this September. In a split-second decision, I pivoted the plot to incorporate a North Korea-style labor camp into Divided.
What followed was a frantic six-month research deep dive into the stories of those who had survived the North Korean regime, either inside labor camps or as dissidents in an oppressive society. I read The Long Road Home by Yong Kim, among other first-hand survival accounts, and the horror inside my heart grew.
I researched our own nation’s history of chattel slavery through first-hand accounts; the writings of Solomon Northup, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Harriet Tubman; and Civil War era newspaper articles. I researched how slave markets thrived in cities I’ve visited in modern-times and how the shadow of slavery still impacts us today.
I also dove deeply into the scourge of modern-day slavery – human trafficking. I read the stories of the many young men, women, and children who are taken captive or made to work against their will in deplorable, inhuman situations. I read articles and books about the brave men and women who are fighting to free them and arrest those perpetrating this evil in our world today.
And with all that, I knew I had to bring these to light. Secret labor camps, human trafficking, and generational bondage all weave together in Divided to keep political dissidents under the regime’s thumb.
I’m not sure we in the west can appreciate the depths of evil propogated by the North Korean regime against its own people through these camps. But within Divided’s pages, I attempt to give the reader a taste of what living and working on a North Korean-style labor camp is like day-to-day. The deprivation and malnourishment; the unrelenting heat in the summer and cold in the winter; doing an impossible job without the proper tools because the camp guards don’t trust the laborers with tools; the prisoner abuse and generational oppression; the prisoner transfers without warning which separate families – all meant to break the spirit of those imprisoned.
My main character in Divided, Marcos, has all the makings of a political dissident in his nation, the Federated Republic of America. He’s angry at the regime for controlling his life and longs to escape the walls which prevent the population of his city from mingling across ethnic lines. But when Marcos finally escapes the city’s walls, patrols catch him. And in a twist of fate that leaves him beaten and bloody, he ends up in a secret and illegal labor camp, which the FRA’s Supreme Commander Martin patterned after North Korea’s, which are still alive and well in my book. Marcos’s longing to escape his normal teenage life inside the city and the confines of its walls intensifies, building into a plan to win freedom for all of the labor camp’s prisoners. It’s an impossible task. Or maybe by working together, Marcos and his diverse friend group will see the impossible done.
The horrors of labor camps like those in Divided are a daily reality for many dissidents and trafficked persons around the world today. Including a labor camp in Divided isn’t meant to frighten readers, though it probably will. It’s meant to honor the memory of those, like Otto, who’ve fought oppressive regimes and died in bondage; to honor men and women like Yong Kim who escaped to tell the story; and to shed light on the millions of people around the world laboring in oppressive conditions or suffering in bondage.
May we never forget them.
Divided by C. C. Robinson (Book One in the Divided Series)
Impenetrable walls. Ethnic division. A ruthless dictator.
Escape. It’s all eighteen-year-old Marcos Sanchez can think about as he stares at the towering walls of Queenstown in the Federated Republic of America, the ruthless dictator Supreme Commander Martin’s stronghold. But with Marcos’s father controlling his life, freedom seems like an impossible dream. That is, until one daring move lands him in a secret labor camp, facing a future worse than death, and he encounters a secret rebel movement – The Underground.
But their rebellion won’t come without consequences. Martin and his toadies will stop at nothing to crush the Underground’s uprising, and the stakes are higher than ever. Will Marcos and his diverse group of friends’ determination and bravery be enough to free the camp, or will they too fall victim to Martin’s iron fist?
With thrilling action, unexpected betrayals, and a relentless quest for freedom, Divided is perfect for fans of classic YA dystopian fiction.
Publisher : Manifold Publishing LLC
Publication date : September 7, 2024
ASIN : B0D1YNR131
Print length : 362 pages
