Auburn native releases first novel, impressed by Pink Scare

What the Auburn native present in that file would encourage “When Mommy Was a Commie,” his first novel, launched by Troy Ebook Makers Sept. 13.

The novel follows younger communist Martha, who’s despatched to Schenectady to marry Common Electrical union chief Milo Milwaukee. Whereas she believes he is a fellow traveler, if truth be told he is pretending with a view to free the union from celebration management. In the meantime their son, Michael, discovers a communist-blasting paperback hero, and Sen. Joseph McCarthy involves town to proceed his Pink Scare witch hunt.

McCarthy truly did go to Schenectady, in 1953 and 1954, as Sorensen realized from the newspaper file. The senator, nonetheless the general public face of Chilly Struggle anxiousness over communist infiltration, was concentrating on United Electrical Employees. Sorensen informed The Citizen the union was extensively identified to be communist, which made it “low-hanging fruit” for McCarthy as his grandstanding wore skinny with the general public.

Nonetheless, the file “gave me the creeps,” Sorensen stated. At first he wished to put in writing a piece of nonfiction about McCarthy’s visits. Then he pivoted to fiction as he researched different “loopy issues” that occurred throughout that postwar time interval, like hostile Soviet takeovers staged by anti-communists. One, in Mosinee, Wisconsin, was so life like that its mayor died after a cerebral hemorrhage.

“I can not say I really like writing as a lot as I really like researching,” Sorensen stated. “That is such a good time interval, all of the turmoil. It is a lot like what we’re going by means of now.”

Sorensen began “When Mommy Was a Commie” about 15 years in the past, he stated, earlier than “our present turmoil.” However he believes the novel makes a well timed level in regards to the hazard of zealotry on either side of the political spectrum. On the identical time, many communists meant effectively, motivated by the situations of the Nice Despair. McCarthy, in the meantime, wasn’t flawed in regards to the existence of spies.

For all of the seriousness of the subject material, the novel is meant to be humorous, Sorensen stated. Reviewers have in contrast it to the work of Kurt Vonnegut and the traditional movie “Dr. Strangelove.” 

“Either side had been so decided to unfold their message in numerous methods. This was all earlier than social media, and TV had begun however it wasn’t like it’s in the present day. In order that they delivered their message by means of bubblegum playing cards,” he stated, referring to the kids’s buying and selling playing cards with anti-communist rhetoric. “It was so excessive, and an incredible platform to drag a narrative collectively involving this household.”

Sorensen, who labored for The Citizen earlier than writing for The Every day Gazette, The Buffalo Information, The New York Every day Information and different publications, stated writing his first novel was difficult. He needed to study to not fall in love with each phrase, he stated, and to let the characters information him. He credited his editors at Troy Ebook Makers with shaping his 400-page debut into “a real web page turner.”

“It is a hopeful message,” he stated. “We’re tearing ourselves aside now very like they did again then, however we survived that turmoil and we’ll survive the present one.”