Rightside/Wrongside

by Cathy Hester Seckman

On Rightside/Wrongside, women are in charge and men live behind the Border Fence. Their only interactions are for sex, which women control with rigid laws. Mothers raise daughters, and fathers know nothing of them. Women send sons across the Fence and never know if they live or die.Rightside President Alanna Olaffson and her countrywomen believe female empowerment is good and necessary, right up to the time it goes frighteningly wrong.Jessie, pregnant with a boy, meets Tenosha, who recently sent her son across the Fence. Unwilling to accept Rightside’s laws, they hatch a plan that grows beyond their control. Smuggling, sabotage, kidnapping, and civil war force a cataclysmic face-to-face confrontation.

329 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 30, 2023

Reviews

[Brian Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having abandoned Earth, the ancestors of the inhabitants of Rightside/Wrongside found refuge on a new planet and established a new and very different society from the one they left behind. Fed up with the waring nature of the men who shared the journey, the women of the new planet banded together to segregate the men on their own side, leaving them to themselves while forging a vibrant women-only society on theirs. As years passed, each side became more and more intransigent in their viewpoints—the men resentful that they are forced to rely on the women for much of what they need, the women both fearful of the threat the men pose and secure that they are the superior society. But both also know that they need the other—for both the pleasure of sex and the need to perpetuate the population, meeting at well-guarded, neutral ground. When babies are born, males are sent to Wrongside to be raised by their fathers. Females remain in the more advanced and prosperous Rightside to be raised by their mothers. It is an arrangement that provides both security and the potential for disaster. When a woman from Rightside falls in love with a Wrongside man and learns she is to have his baby, she determines that the rigid walls that bar them from one another must be breached, even if doing so risks undermining the very fabric of their separate societies and drives them toward civil war.

Author Cathy Hester Seckman has painted a vivid portrait of what can happen to a society divided. Filled with engaging characters, poignant romance, and pulse-pounding tension, the novel is both a cautionary tale and an enduring story of redemptive love between couples as well as the unbreakable bond that parents feel for their children.

[Kim Ligon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dystopian world battle of the sexes

This story is exceptionally well written with characters you learn to care about. In a world where men live on one side of a fence and women on the other, they all have fears about the others. The only time they interact is for sex. All male children live with their fathers and female children with their mothers never meeting the other parent. All that changes when Jessie and Davy break all the rules and fall in love. On both sides of the fence people begin to long for the children they've never met. This story highlights how prejudice promotes fear of the unknown. It has elements of political intrigue and power hungry people. It will have you cheering for love finding a way and appreciating the world view of an affectionate little girl. I highly recommend this book for action packed drama all the way to the happy ending.

[L.B. Griffin · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a story! Women have the upper hand, and for good reason. Leaving Earth 71 years ago, men and women hoping to forge a new life together on a new planet should have been their Eutopia. But.… Author Cathy Hester Seckman has created a believable world in which the women have seriously come into their own, then disaster strikes. A child is in danger.

I am still marvelling at the brilliant storyline and use of terminology which is really smartly used throughout … Ms Seckman brings home the need for order, empathy, love, and ultimately, humanity. A superb read 5*