A New Year’s Tale

Sometime in the near future, the U.S. government discovers that it doesn't have enough money to cover Social Security and Medicare. Thus are born the new Senior Laws. These are aimed at making sure no one lives much past age sixty-five. The Diminished Culpability Act, for example, states that if you kill someone aged twenty-one, you go to prison for life. But if you kill a seventy-year-old you only get two years in the slammer and for an eighty-year-old you only have to do two weeks of community service. This has alarmed the spirit world, from where our ancestors watch over us. In particular, the old gods of Africa are outraged by the lack of respect given to the elderly. Being spirit, they can do nothing physical, but they can recruit the living. They select five seniors to correct the situation. These five must elude capture and figure out a way to take over the government. The subject is serious, but the story is hopeful, upbeat and wickedly funny. This is an adult book.

Nancy was born in 1941 in Phoenix and grew up in a hotel on the Arizona-Mexico border where she worked the switchboard at the age of nine. She also found time to hang out in the old state prison and the hobo jungle along the banks of the Colorado River. She attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, earning her BA in 1963. Instead of taking a regular job, she joined the Peace Corps and was sent to India (1963-1965). When she returned, she moved into a commune in Berkeley, sold newspapers on the street for a while, then got a job in the Entomology department at UC Berkeley and also took courses in Chemistry there. Restless, again, she decided to visit Africa. She and a friend tried to hitchhike by boat but the ship they’d selected turned out to be stolen and was boarded by the Coast Guard just outside the Golden Gate Bridge. Nancy was forced to buy an airline ticket. She spent more than a year, living virtually alone, on Lake Cabora Bassa in Mozambique, monitoring water weeds. Next she was hired to help control tsetse fly in the dense bush on the banks of the Zambezi in Zimbabwe. Part of the time she spent in the capital, Harare, and there met her future husband. They married a few weeks later (in 1976) and now live in Menlo Park, California. They have a son, Daniel, who is in the U.S. navy. Nancy’s honors include the National Book Award (Children’s Literature) for The House of the Scorpion and Newbery Honors for The Ear, the Eye and The Arm, A Girl Named Disaster and The House of the Scorpion. She is the author of seven novels, three picture books and a number of short stories. Her books have been translated into 26 languages.