What is the setting of Among the Hidden?
You may have noticed that I never actually gave an exact time and place for the story. I didn’t just forget to—I did this on purpose. I wanted readers to think about whether this is something that could happen in the United States, if there were droughts and famines and an extreme change in the government. But I didn’t want to come out and say that, partly because all the explanation would have bogged down the story, and partly because I thought a lot of people would think, “Nope, that could never happen here!” and then dismiss the whole book. So I wanted to make readers think. I could have given an exact year—I was picturing everything as happening twenty or thirty years in the future. But it’s always bothered me that the book 1984 lost some of its effect after 1984 came and passed, so I didn’t want to be that precise.
