Upright Women Wanted

"Taking place in an indeterminate future where the U.S. has devolved into a patriarchal society that resembles the Old West, Sarah Gailey’s novella Upright Women Wanted centers on Esther Augustus, a young Arizona woman who runs away to join the Librarians, an ostensibly nunlike order of women who travel in wagon trains disseminating printed information – which is strictly controlled by the government. Gailey populates the book with forces we know all too well today: homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, patriarchy, fascism and the fraught, post-truth minefield we find ourselves navigating. But it’s also a breezy, rousing and unrelentingly fun gallop."