Alma

About the Book

Alma is a story of war and threats to human survival in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and the heroic efforts of one American woman to combat them.

Attending grief-therapy sessions in her hometown of Pershing, Georgia, Alma Preston organizes MAW (Mothers Against War). After launching protests against various military actions, such as the bombing of Serbia, Alma changes the organization’s name to WOW (Women of the World) and expands the group’s focus to include other issues, such as globalization, the environment, and the empowerment of women worldwide. Following a successful regional convention in Atlanta and mammoth rallies in St. Louis and Vienna, WOW emerges as a potent international force.

This romantic novel, a tragic but inspirational saga of an ordinary American family thrust onto the world stage by a series of cataclysmic events, is a compelling tale embracing both the heroic and the idealistic. Against a background of epic events the tortuous relationship of Alma and Brent unfolds, dramatizing how war wreaks havoc far beyond the battlefield.

Alma celebrates the ingenuity and sacrifice needed to transform civilization in an age when terrorism is becoming ever more threatening due to advancing technology and third-world desperation. Its surprising and emotional ending will sharpen every reader’s perception of why the future of humanity is dependent on both feminist power and the emergence of male enlightenment.

BOOK REVIEW

Would the world be better off if women were running the show? This is the theme of Jay Higginbotham’s new novel Alma, recently published by Xlibris (Markham Books, 2002), and a subject likely to set male chauvinists on edge.

Alma Preston, an ordinary mother and schoolteacher, is contentedly rearing her four children in Pershing, Georgia, a small town just outside of Atlanta. She’s even content with her macho husband Brent, a sportsman, hunter, avid member of the NRA, and a small-time businessman gradually getting ahead.

Alma’s life dramatically changes when her children graduate from high school and enter the armed services. After several family tragedies (one of her sons is killed in the invasion of Panama; another is slain by terrorists in the Mideast), Alma explodes, becomes a different person entirely, and eventually organizes a new arm of the women’s movement. Her faith in men’s ability to run the world is destroyed. “Men are making all the decisions everywhere, “ she charges. “They have been controlling government for centuries and what has it brought us? Wars, wars and more wars. And if this were not enough, their politics are devastating the environment, bringing the world to ruin and creating an economy that insures abject horror among hundreds of millions of women and children everywhere.”

Alma’s movement, a good bit more ambitious than some previous movements, is concerned with nothing less than women’s empowerment and their gaining the majority vote (“only natural, since we, in fact, are the majority.”)

Starting out modestly in Pershing (a town of some 25,000), Alma organizes MAW (Mothers Against War) and promotes a regional conference in Atlanta. She then moves on to St. Louis for the largest women’s rally in American history. The building of the American organization is a monumental achievement, but Alma has grander ambitions.

When her youngest son Zachary decides also to join the service, rather than enter college as she’d hoped, Alma explodes and leaves her husband Brent whom she blames for the actions and fates of her children.

Alma’s story is told from the viewpoints of six main characters, including Brent, Zachary, and her best friend Ouida (who lukewarmly joins Alma in her movement). The narrative technique employed might seem difficult to follow, but the action flows well, keeping the reader inside the heads of the

About the Author

Jay Higginbotham, prize-winning author and world traveler, has published seventeen books, one of which, Old Mobile, won five literary awards. His Fast Train Russia was first published in the USSR in 1981 and the American edition (Dodd, Mead, 1983) was enthusiastically received in such publications as The New Yorker, Christian Science Monitor, Kirkus Reviews and The Library Journal. Higginbotham’s writings have been translated into 27 languages, including Russian, Chinese and Arabic. He has written for the Encyclopedia Britannica, and is listed in the Dictionary of International Biography. Jacket illustration by Michele Nolen-Schmidt