This image is the cover for the book It Happened Here

It Happened Here

A family falls apart as America is overtaken by totalitarian rule in this near-future dystopian novel echoing Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here.

In 2035, fourteen-year-old Louise is interviewing her family members to find out what went wrong—for the family and the nation. It seems both started falling apart around 2019. Then the 2020 elections were canceled, and the president remained in power for sixteen years. This is the story of one family divided by ideology, and of undying hope in the direst of circumstances.

In 1935, Sinclair Lewis challenged readers to imagine an America hijacked by a totalitarian president whose message was fueled by fear, division, and “patriotism.” Richard Dresser’s It Happened Here delivers a modern vision of just such an America. Told through the interwoven voices of eight different characters, it reveals how the Weeks family navigates the slow death of democracy in the country they all love.

Richard Dresser

Richard Dresser is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and television writer. His many plays, including Below the Belt and Rounding Third, have been produced throughout New York, Europe, and leading regional theaters. He is president and a founding member of the Writers Guild Initiative, which conducts writing workshops all over the country with the mission of giving a voice to populations who are not being heard. Dresser teaches screenwriting at the graduate film school of Columbia University and lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, with his wife, Rebecca.

Brown Books Publishing Group