Dread Nation is a historical fiction novel by Justina Ireland published in 2018. The novel blends elements of science fiction, fantasy, and horror to create an altered timeline in which the American Civil War is interrupted by a zombie apocalypse, and a young Black woman must find her way in a world where the living may be more dangerous than the undead. Dread Nation explores the deep-seated racism, sexism, and classism of 19th-century America through issues such as propaganda, eugenics, and slavery. Dread Nation is the first book in a duology and received the Locus Award along with nominations for the Bram Stoker and Andre Norton Awards. The version used for this guide is the hardback of the Balzer + Bray imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Plot Summary

Jane McKeene is a Black child who was born to a white woman. Those present at her birth assume that Jane is the child of an adulterous affair. The focus abruptly shifts to dead soldiers rising and attacking the living after the Battle of Gettysburg.

When Jane is 17, she attends “Miss Preston’s School of Combat for Negro Girls,” where she is trained to defend white women from the undead, or shamblers. Jane struggles to stay out of trouble, and one night at a lecture, she finds herself in the middle of a shambler attack within the walls of Baltimore County, a place that is supposed to be shambler-free. To thank her for her services, Jane and her classmate Katherine are invited to the mayor of Baltimore’s house. However, Jane’s ex-lover Jackson needs her help. His younger sister has gone missing, and as rumors start to spread of entire families disappearing without explanation, Jane agrees to go snooping around the mayor’s estate with Jackson to find out where his sister might have been taken.

Jane and Jackson are caught, and the mayor of Baltimore sends them and Katherine to Summerland, a faraway frontier town in Kansas. The mayor admits that Baltimore isn’t safe, and it’s only a matter of time before everyone in the Eastern cities are killed or forced to flee. In Summerland, Jackson is taken away, and Jane and Katherine are tasked with serving the white community and defending the wall around Summerland. Jane manages to convince the town’s sheriff and preacher that Katherine is a white woman, ensuring that Katherine will be treated well. Jane, however, is forced to work long hours for little pay and meager food portions. She and the other Black workers are set up to fail with poorly maintained weapons, and they are treated like animals by the white authorities in town.

In Summerland, religion and politics have created an unequal system of labor. White citizens are not expected to contribute to the defense of the town, and as the number of shamblers around the settlement grows, the Black workers find themselves overwhelmed and outnumbered. Jane realizes that she will have to escape before the walls of the city fail.

Jane meets Gideon, a gifted inventor and the son of the mayor of Baltimore, who disagrees with the way Summerland is run. She also finds Jackson’s sister Lily, and she learns that shamblers are being brought into the town on purpose to generate electricity for the town. Jane decides to use the sheriff’s affection for Katherine against him; she encourages Katherine to flirt with the sheriff in hopes of drugging and killing him. However, word starts to spread that the Eastern cities of the United States have fallen to a huge horde of shamblers, and one night when Jane is forced to fight the shamblers, she notices that they appear to be getting smarter. News arrives that a giant horde is headed for Summerland, and if the townspeople don’t band together to fight, the town will be lost.

The sheriff discovers that Katherine isn’t white, and in a dramatic standoff, Jane shoots and kills him and wounds the town’s vindictive preacher. Jane reveals that she killed her own father when she was a child, because her mother was also a Black woman posing as a white woman, and Jane knew that her mother would be killed if news of her secret ever got out. The walls of Summerland are breached, and as the city fills with shamblers, Jane escapes with her friends and heads for safety. She learns that her mother has fled to California to find safety, and Jane vows to find her.