VOTE OF CONFIDENCE
The election activist Stacey Abrams’ new novel brings politics to its pages, to thrilling effect
The first question to Stacey Abrams has to be: how do you find the time? We’re speaking about her new novel, While
Justice Sleeps, a gripping legal thriller that mixes intrigue in the US Supreme Court with the fascinating – and deadly – potential of biotech and a terrifying portrait of a demagogic US president into an exciting brew. The book’s protagonist is Avery Keene, a brilliant young law clerk who finds herself at the centre of it all. ‘I love writing!’ Abrams says with a grin, ‘and so I really carved out the time to do it. I tend to write very quickly once I have the idea in my head. I love storytelling and being able to tell stories that people find compelling.’
When Justice Sleeps is Abrams’ 11th book and her ninth novel (she published eight romance novels under the name Selena Montgomery); her non-fiction titles, Our Time is Now: Power, Purpose and the Fight for a Fair America and Lead from the Outside: How to Build Your Future and Make Real Change were New York Times bestsellers.
But while she has a passion for writing, it would be fair to say that her true focus is politics. A lawyer and political activist, Abrams served as Democratic leader of the Georgia House of Representatives for seven years before becoming the first African-American female gubernatorial nominee of a major party in the history of the country, when she ran for governor of Georgia in 2018. She won more votes at the time than any other Democrat in the historically Republican state’s history, but nevertheless lost the race.
Still, as she subsequently said, ‘winning doesn’t always mean you get the prize’: Abrams plays a long game. After that election she launched Fair Fight Action, a grass-roots organisation, which works to promote fair elections, both in the state of Georgia and around the country, to educate the public about their voting rights and encourage participation in elections. When Georgia’s Democratic Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock won their seats last November – in a stunning result that tipped the balance of the US Senate – it wouldn’t have happened without Abrams, who helped to register 800,000 brand-new voters in the state.
One of six siblings, she was born in Wisconsin and spent her girlhood in Mississippi, moving to Georgia when she was 15. Both her parents are pastors, and she was raised with a strong sense of social justice. Her fiction has always been part of her larger project. ‘I’ve always tried to think about how you take real-life issues and not make them fantastical, but tell a story that allows people to enter that space without thinking, “I’m coming to work”.’ Her first novel addressed problems of environmental racism and justice, using a chemical physicist as her heroine; Secrets and Lies is about an ethnobotanist, ‘because of the tendency to dismiss the cultural heritage of communities who had to rely, not on expensive pharmaceuticals, but on their understanding of plants that they could gather and use to save their lives,’ she says.
When I ask Abrams if she wants to run for president – her name was in the running as a possible vice-presidential pick in 2020 – she answers with a firm ‘yes’. But not because she craves power, or the grandeur of the office; she wishes to support the under-served communities that have been the focus of her activism. ‘I don’t know when that will come to fruition, but my job is to be preparing myself through the work I’m doing now. Because the only reason to want that job is to do the work I am doing now at a higher scale. And if I’m not doing this well, then I haven’t earnt the right to think about that other thing.’ Stacey Abrams is committed to taking one step at a time: but with each step, she knows where she’s headed. ‘While Justice Sleeps’ by Stacey Abrams (£14.99, Harper Fiction) will be published on
27 May.