A work-in-progress draft of chapter one available for a limited time.

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Drawing inspiration from the history of America’s early colonial period, this story begins as a crew trains to become the first humans to leave our solar system and establish a colony on a fictional planet orbiting a newly-discovered red dwarf star. The protagonist, Mariana White, is experiencing visions that hint toward a mysterious future on this new world. As she struggles to make sense of this, she has a devastating setback in her training. In a tender yet turbulent scene with Adnan Dahoud, another colonist that she has a romantic relationship with, she receives upsetting news about her role in the mission.

The novel’s main plot points are inspired by a historical event, the establishment and mysterious disappearance of the colonists at Roanoke from 1585 to 1590, the first English colony in the New World. At that time England was under the rule of Elizabeth I, and was threatened with invasion by Spain, who wanted to overthrow Elizabeth and return the country to Catholicism. At this time, England was a minor European power under constant threat from its neighbors, but would eventually become the world’s biggest and most powerful empire at the turn of the 20th century.

The Lost Colony is set just over 150 years into the future from the present. No longer the world’s one super power, the United States has become comparatively weaker than a bloc of nations led by China. In a power struggle at the intersection of nationalism, ethnicity, and spirituality similar to the geopolitical conditions of the Protestant Reformation in Europe, the United States leads a smaller group of nations devoted to the idea of “Truth.”

As technologies like artificial intelligence and space travel have changed the geopolitical reality of this speculative future, “Truth” as these characters see it rests on an intentional limiting of technology in favor of human judgment, and an intense, patriotic commitment to the “vow of discovery” that these colonists take in the novel. It is an ideological as well as diplomatic and military conflict reminiscent of the Cold War, with a similar feeling of existential threats that constantly haunt the characters.

This novel is part of what will eventually become a series of allegorical novels that create analogues to the early history of the United States. The novel arises in the context of the interpretation of American history becoming a target of right wing extremists who are advancing racist, xenophobic, and reactionary views of American history. This series will aim to present a critical view of what the founding values of the United States were and show how they could evolve into a future that embraces equal justice, and equality among its citizens and planet.