YA Literature | Bias | Publishing
In 2013, when Keira Drake sat down to write her debut young-adult fantasy novel, The Continent,
she wanted to write about privilege, about the way that those who have
it can so easily turn a blind eye to the suffering of those who don’t.
Her imagination had been sparked by an NPR report about bombings in
Iraq; it brought her to tears, and when she switched off the radio, she
began thinking about what might happen if someone like her — someone
white, sheltered, and privileged — suddenly found herself in the middle
of a war between two violent societies in a foreign land. Drake set her
fantasy in a place called the Continent, a brutal realm where privileged
tourists, safe in their heli-planes, gaze down with detached curiosity
at the native people slaughtering each other below. After a heli-plane
crashes, Drake’s narrator is saved by one of the natives from an
attempted rape at the hands of an enemy tribe, and she, in turn, saves
his people from ruin.
Drake’s
editor at Harlequin, Natashya Wilson, thought the book had best-seller
potential. She offered Drake a “significant” three-book deal (publishing
code for an advance between $251,000 and $499,000), and Harlequin
launched a major marketing campaign, sending Drake to conferences around
the country. Early readers of advance copies were enthusiastic. A review
posted on Goodreads half a year before the book’s scheduled publication
date hailed Drake as a visionary for her “eye-opening” revelation that
“a native isn’t a savage or primitive.”
