Minnesota Cold. A Novel

2009 Kraack, Cynthia. Minnesota Cold. Novel. Saint Cloud, MN: North Star Press of St. Cloud. 279 pp. PSt

Dystopia. After a nuclear war, Minnesota becomes independent under the rule of the old politicians and business leaders, who controlled both the political system and the economy and undermined education to make it serve their purposes. They set up a program using Minnesota’s biomedical expertise to provide the world with medicine, breeding people with genetic enhancements, and establishing a means of judging whether a person is worth keeping alive and killing those judged not. The novel’s protagonist is a healthy older woman judged not worth keeping alive and her successful resistance that uncovers the breeding program and overthrows the dystopia. The novel ends with the difficult transition from authoritarian rule, a normal economy, the re-establishment of the education system, the problems raised by integrating the “breeders” produced by the genetics program. Female author.