Hello Readers! Welcome to the Book Blitz for
Home by Eleni McKnight!
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found at the end of the post!
found at the end of the post!
Happy Release Week, Eleni!
Published: WordCrafts Press, LLC.
Publication Date: Nov 22, 2016
Publication Date: Nov 22, 2016
Available for Purchase:
AMAZONKnowledge is a dangerous commodity in the Home commune, the last beacon of civilization against the fallen outside world. As Suzannah Commons begins to secretly read forbidden books, she jeopardizes her future for the forbidden love of the boy who supplies her new, dangerous habit, Silas Maars, and his family. Will her new-found knowledge be her destruction?Suzannah is in training with the rest of the unmarried teenage girls in the Handmaiden House and Home’s laundry to become a bride when she accidentally comes upon a naked boy in one of the family quarters, Silas Maars. To see a naked man before marriage is an unforgivable sin in Home and a challenge to her precious status as a virgin, her only aspect of worth. This compromise to her purity would earn her an automatic exile in the Hard Labor Camp, a death sentence until the commune leader, Parson, sentences her to the punishment of serving Silas and his unusual family as a housekeeper. As she works for the Maars family and is isolated from the rest of the commune’s population, she discovers the frightening, threatening outside world is not as dangerous as she has been led to believe. The Maars family reveals to her that Deacon controls the population of Home by keeping them all ignorant, denying them education and books so he can teach his own twisted, corrupt, self-serving version of religion from the pulpit. As she learns the truth and begins to fall into a star-crossed love with Silas, her fate as a childbride to one of the lecherous Elders or a worker in the hard labor camp is drawing nigh.
World-building for Home
I’ve feared the political ideology of patriarchy for a while, now. I prefer equality between the sexes, or as it’s better known, feminism, and I’ve thought about how the world would look if all the real-life horrors that life is like without feminism. Feminism campaigns against, like excessively strict dress codes for women and the idea that women are not worthy of equal jobs in the workplace because their main focus should be homemaking and starting families, and I started from that. I always said I’d never write a dystopian novel, but things transpired in 2012 that lead me to it.
The women in this world do not have choices. Their choices are made for them by men and they are considered “children” and “lesser than men”, even as adults in an attempt to keep some semblance of control. I myself have experienced this kind of abuse and mistreatment, people trying to control me. It was difficult to break out of, but I’ve done it. Only I can decide what’s best for me, not somebody else. When you give the control over to someone else to make you happy, they’ll always do it wrong. And it can get abusive and dangerous at times, too.
I’ve been attacked repeatedly with “if women would just act like ladies, then men would be gentlemen again” as if that was a defense against why rape happens due to women requesting equality with men. I’ve also gotten excuses that if women didn’t dress a certain way, have a certain reputation, ambitions, or come from certain backgrounds, they wouldn’t get raped. This is victim-blaming, and it’s not something I have a lot of sympathy or tolerance for. This list of reasons why women are raped are never-ending. There is no particular way to dress that would keep a rapist from raping. Even virgins are victims are rape and sexual assault. We’ve had men raped by women, and their rapes are considered a joke and are thought to be hilarious, like in 40 Days and 40 Nights (where Josh Hartnett’s character wakes up to his ex-girlfriend having sex with him without consent), a moment that’s chilling for many rape victims of different genders. When people take private nude pictures/sex tapes and they get leaked by a malicious individual, it’s the person in the nude photo’s fault and their problem, not the fault of the person who shared it. And it’s these things that promote rape culture, the ultimate victim-blaming society.
