Why I Wrote Gran Caravan
A 61-Year-Old Woman Adventurer
“hit the road with no bridges left unburned”
by Ginger Booth
Gran Caravan is a fresh anniversary book in my Calm Act climate fiction series.
But what to write? The obvious move was an update – a new adventure ten years later for Dee Baker, the first-person star of End Game. And the September anniversary book, Rising Sea, got that story.
But I’ve learned a few things in the past decade, as an author. The best has been the joy of getting to know my audience. Most books are bought by women of a certain age. We love reading. Now that we’re not so bogged down by career and childcare and chores, we can put our feet up and escape into a good book.
Why don’t more books feature an older woman protagonist?
I’m blessed with plenty of male readers too! But women, this one’s for us. And guys have women in their lives too.
Or older women walk past them, dismissed by a quick stereotype. I’m 64 now. Ageism feels quite real as we near retirement age. Do you ever feel invisible? Like people look right past us, and we don’t matter? Like we’re assumed to be foolish, know nothing, outdated, incompetent to operate a TV remote? Especially at a job interview – if we can even get our foot in the door for one of those.
Part of this feeling comes from how people don’t rely on us in droves anymore, and good riddance, really. Do we miss it? Was that fun? Did it make us feel important? By age 40, I was too tired to notice. The role of overworked drudge comes to us too readily. Less welcome is to let go of feeling valued and respected. As though the march of history and technology rendered our life lessons irrelevant, out of date.
Grey hairs do not make us stupid. We did not lose our spirit of adventure. Though the body has developed some creaky opinions. It’s sure getting harder to build muscle, and if you’re like me, pennies must be pinched. Because my decline is negotiable, but inevitable. Based on my parents’ lifespans, my pennies may need to stretch another 30+ years. Good thing reading is cheap.
But I’m not done yet! I still matter! Now that I finally have time for adventures, I can still do that. Granted, I need to hurry up. Being cold and wet wasn’t fun even as a teenager, and I’ve only grown less tolerant of discomfort as time went on. My brain’s still plenty active, and thronged with imaginary friends! As a reader, those character friends keep you company, too. And as my mother always said, “I’m never bored if there’s something to read.”
Claire Cutler, the voice of Gran Caravan, is 61. Raising a granddaughter solo, she caught another generation’s worth of drudgery and poverty. I was a single parent, too, and it doesn’t make you wealthy. But at least she has Social Security, right?
That promise is only as sound as the government that made it. When the government collapses, and she loses her state job, she’s already barely making ends meet. Denver is overflowing with refugees from the New Dust Bowl. Rents skyrocketing, incomes flatlined as inflation rises out of control – if people can find paying work at all. And then the government collapses.
Her dual-citizen granddaughter has somewhere else to go, to her other grandma in Canada. In shock, Claire realizes it’s that time. It’s time to quit pretending she can make ends meet, and give up the anchor at the center of her life, the person she’s been living for.
My own grandson is dual citizen, Canadian-USA.
And then Claire has nothing left. No job, no money, no home, no family, just her car to sleep in. She’s not alone in a sense. Plenty of older men and women are caught in the same predicament, hobos of advanced age in a cruel winter. But after she signs away her granddaughter at a Canadian consulate, mobbed as it airlifts its citizens to safety from the ex-USA, a kind man makes a suggestion. She could join a gran caravan up in the Rockies.
Claire’s life starts over at 61, with fresh adventures. As it does for us all. She travels through humiliation and defeat, and the Rocky Mountains, to reclaim her strength, and matter. She’s not invisible after all.
At our age, we’ve seen climate change. The world has changed rapidly over the decades of our lives. And our grandchildren will inherit a damaged biome, and a weakened nation. In science fiction, we exaggerate that of course. But as reviewers point out, it’s all too easy to imagine this world coming right around the corner.
The gran caravan isn’t a new device for this book, by the way. The first gran caravan appeared in book 1 of the Calm Act series, End Game, and was a fan favorite. These rowdy outlaw elders factor in several other books along the way, and so does that Canadian doctor.
Can women relate? Gran Caravan was my most successful launch ever. Yes, I believe women of a certain age can relate all to well to Claire’s predicament. And these women – who buy most of the books! – so rarely get a chance to see themselves as the hero.
All three books in the recent Calm Act 10 Years anniversary series are standalone entry points – Gran Caravan, Bunker Buster, and Rising Sea. You don’t need to read the original Calm Act or Feral America series first to enjoy them, or read them in order.
