When Emily B. Martin was a kid, she had lots of dream jobs, includingwriter,illustrator, andNational Park Serviceranger. But all three at once? She never imagined she’d hit that jackpot. Today, however, that’s exactly what she’s doing,using her experiences as a park rangeras inspiration forpopular adventure-fantasy novels.
Martin’s latest book, ,is an engrossing storythat takes place in atroubled world full of dramatic landscapes. Itcovers hefty themes like conservation, human trafficking, and gender equality, and its settingsare inspired by environmentsMartin knows well.“I first conceived of Sunshield when I was working in Yellowstone as a ranger,” she says. “Like many of my stories, it was really the natural setting that fueled the story.”
It is the first titlein a duology that Martin is callingThe Outlaw Road, set in the fantastical Eastern World thatshe createdandexplored. Martin illustrated the maps of the Eastern World that are included in the beginning of the book, helping readers better visualizethe landas she does: the dusty deserts and canyons of the country of Alcoro were inspired by her time working at , located in theSangre de Cristo Mountains ofNew Mexico, whilethe lush scenery of Moquoia, another Eastern World nation,is meant to invokethe maple, cedar, and redwood forests of the Pacific Northwest.
“Awareness can start in a fantasy or fiction novel.”
Sunshield isnoticeably absent of vehicles and technology and seemsto take place sometime during the 19th century. Itfollows three protagonistsas they fight to end a slave-labor system that powersfactories and mining quarries, tears families apart, and physically abuses and exploits bonded workers. The main characters’ lives intersect to reveal how an individual’s choices influence the people and landscape around them—a cornerstone of conservation philosophy that Martin woveinto the plot. First, there’sLark (also known as the Sunshield Bandit), a Robin Hood–like outlaw who rescues bonded workers by holding up the stagecoaches transporting them. Then we haveVeran,a sometimes-insecure diplomat hoping to dismantle the labor system. Finally,Tamsin is a prisoner captured for speaking the truth about the system’s corruption, a narrative that becomesthe focal point of the book’s climatic rescue mission.
Martintackles subjects like human-rights abusesand socioeconomic inequality in a compelling way.The bonded workers Lark rescues, forinstance, have all experienced emotional and physical traumas, which arediscussedfrankly. Many characters have dark skin—a far cry from fantasy literature of the past, whichreflected predominantly white men. There’s alsofeminist bent to the story, one found inMartin’sbooks more generally.“As a park ranger, I work with women who are firefighters, cops, and bear researchers,” Martin says. “Strong female characters are the least fantastical part of these stories.” The result is abelievable—and better yet, relatable—set of female characters.
The book also contains subplotsabout topicslike ecological interconnectedness and species loss.At one point in the story, hundreds of thousands of birds beginto dieoutside Moquoia’s glass palace after flying into its transparent, man-made walls; simultaneously, people start to get sick with a deadly flu caused by mosquito bites. Martin raises questions about the overall ecology behind thoseevents in her fantasy world: Could the influx of mosquitoes be related to the dying birds? Are the birds’ deaths preventable?
Martin, who now spends her summers working as a ranger in Yellowstone and Great Smoky MountainsNational Parks, knew a thing or two about the American landscape and how to get people to care about it even before she was an author. She has a master’s degree in parks management, and hergraduate studies focused on assessing how ranger programs could more effectively encourage visitors to support preserved areas.“The more we start to see the impact we have, we can’t get away from it,” she says.
Martin hopes her stories will start a larger conversationaboutsocial issuesand the environmental catastrophes that she sees in herranger work.“The power of fiction is introducing these issues in such a way that you see it played out on the page, but you’re removed from it,” she says. “Awareness can start in a fantasy or fiction novel.”
It’s this attitude—that together we can change the turbulent state of our world—that Martin relays to readers in Sunshield, using the plot to show how individual actions can make a big difference. Even if that ethos feels fantastically optimistic during thesegrim times, it’s a step in the right direction.