Kate Raffordy

A Better Place Kate Raffordy

A deadly disease has all but eliminated the world's male population and boys are taken from their homes at the age of twelve to be tested for the disease; never to return to their families. One woman conspires to oppose the system by agreeing to her sister's plan of falsifying her son's birth certificate and masquerading her son as a girl. In a world that is now run solely by women, all women are able to pursue avenues that heretofore were not always open to them. There is no glass ceiling, no barriers due to gender. No rape. No threats of war. The world is truly a safer and better place. And although she perseveres in her plan of hiding her son's true identity, she is in constant fear of his being discovered. She struggles with his need to be himself, a boy, and with the reality of the consequences of his actions. Before his twelfth birthday they flee to the commune her sister has established for other boys who have escaped the deadly grip of the disease and the government's mandatory quarantine. But their new circumstance leads her to wonder if man's demise is solely the consequence of this virulent disease or is it being aided by the system; a system conceived and run by women.