Explora Book Review has praised Karen East’s dystopian novel, ‘Sanctuary,’ for its ambitious fusion of domestic violence, speculative dystopia, and intimate human drama, calling the combination “unusual and, at its best, moving.”
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, 10th Sep 2026 - The review identifies the novel’s split timeline as its most distinctive structural choice. One thread opens in 1998, when Rachel Anderson, thirty-four years old and fleeing a violent marriage, drives through a Wisconsin fog toward a life she can’t yet picture. Over the following decades, she builds a career defending other women, work that eventually puts her on the FBI’s radar. By the time renewed harassment catches up with her, Rachel is fifty-seven, and she retreats to the same corner of northern Wisconsin she once fled, this time an Ojibwe reservation, looking for somewhere the past can’t easily reach.
The second thread picks up decades later, in a 2039 Minneapolis where daily life runs on ID swipes, sector permissions, and air-quality warnings; Homeland Security tracks residents’ movement between neighborhoods, and older citizens are quietly relocated without much explanation. Into this world East places journalist Janet Ryan, whose reporting eventually draws her toward the same Wisconsin reservation—and toward Rachel, now known to the community simply as “Old Woman.” The review describes the moment the two storylines meet as the point where “what starts as two lives separated by decades slowly tightens into one story,” as the state closes in on the informal network sheltering dissidents there.
The review gives particular attention to East’s treatment of Indigenous spiritual practice. Drumming, tobacco offerings, and a wandering-spirit sequence near the book’s end are handled, in the reviewer’s words, “with evident care” and “lend the ending real emotional weight.” The review also calls the eventual convergence of Rachel’s and Janet’s stories “genuinely rewarding.” It identifies the novel’s central strength as its sincerity: its willingness to hold activist fiction, climate fiction, and speculative dystopia in the same frame. When Old Woman dies—her funeral built around Anishinaabe ritual—the review notes it “reads less like an ending than a passing of the torch.”
The praise isn’t unqualified. The review suggests that aspects of the secondary characterization can sometimes blur together. It notes that East’s dialogue-heavy style—while making the book’s dense speculative world-building accessible—occasionally lets exposition crowd out scene-craft. Even so, the review concludes Sanctuary to “appeal most to readers drawn to activist fiction, climate fiction, and stories of intergenerational resilience.”
The novel draws on East’s own background: a retired marriage and family therapist, she spent nineteen years working with American Indian tribes across the Midwest. It is an experience that shapes the book’s depiction of reservation and Anishinaabe community life. East lives in northern Wisconsin.
Sanctuary is available on Amazon and other major online bookstores. The full review will be published on the Explora Books website in the coming weeks.
About Explora Books
Explora Books is a book marketing firm located in the heart of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The company specializes in self-publishing and marketing, taking pride in its exhaustive research and creative strategies that provide wider avenues for aspiring authors to gain recognition for their works. Explora Books aims to guide authors through the complexities of self-publishing, offering convenient solutions to navigate this process. The firm fosters and redefines creativity and innovation, setting new industry standards. Explora Books is dedicated to empowering authors globally.
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