A woman’s journey with the Black Panthers reveals the momentum — and dangers — of activism

Revolution can be a last resort. It may possess a utopia in its sights, but the path to peace is often fraught with brutality. The personal cost of revolution grips “Kingdom of No Tomorrow,” a recipient of the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. In it, author Fabienne Josaphat chronicles the loves and losses of a clutch of Black Panther members from the late 1960s. Through her frank look at the imbalance of gender equality in the Black Power social movement, Josaphat considers the risk and reward of revolutionary action during a time of heightened crisis and paranoia.

Antoinette “Nettie” Boileau is a 20-year-old public health student in Oakland in 1968. Orphaned as a young girl, Nettie and her Tante Mado left behind their homeland, Haiti, for California after her father’s murder. A physician as well as a revolutionary, he fought against a Haitian paramilitary and secret police organization. Isolated as a child, Nettie now aspires to “heal not just with medicine and leaves, but also with nutrition and sunlight.” By becoming a doctor, she hopes to “show compassion like her father” and “follow in his footsteps.”

Kingdom of No Tomorrow

(Algonquin Books )

These aspirations lead her to a local clinic where, along with a fellow student, Clia Brown, Nettie administers house visits, gathering information on patients. Both see their work as in step with the activism of their time.

But when a house visit to a sick patient turns violent, Nettie recognizes the need for direct community action, something Clia already believes in as a comrade in the Black Panther Party, the Black Power political organization that intended to liberate Black Americans. While many of their efforts focused on public health, the collective did not shy away from accumulating weapons and preparing for violence.

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Nettie’s family history left her aware of the stakes at play should she join the fold. Clia’s influence encourages Nettie to become politically engaged and together they read widely and travel to hear the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. speak in Southern California. In a period filled with change and possibility, it feels almost natural that their trip would lead to an unexpected encounter “forever stamped on their skin.” Though neither Nettie nor Clia plainly states the depth of their connection, neither do they shy away from their attraction to one another.

This entanglement is in keeping with the moment itself. Josaphat imagines a lecture given by Black Power leader Stokley Carmichael, where he insists: “We must first develop an undying love for our people. If we do not do that, we will be wiped out.” This unconditional bond doesn’t come easily for Nettie, but Clia insists that this is not simply a feeling, but also an “action.” The two “loved discovering the truth together. It was more than friendship. It was sistahood.” But their fierce closeness was soon to be tested.

One wonders what the movement could have been had it been free of the influence of men. Though Josaphat takes pains to lay out the power of sisterhood, she quickly introduces an oppositional power dynamic within the party. From the first time Melvin Mosley arrives, poised to resolve a neighborhood conflict, his silhouette alone dominates the narrative. His very “proximity made her hopeful,” but Nettie also senses some unspoken, unbridled power within him. A Vietnam vet, he carries himself with bravado as an authority on “security” within the party. She is drawn to his forceful commitment to the community and struck by his humorless posture. He was an enigma and his magnetism was undeniable.

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Eager to prove herself as a skilled marksman and willing volunteer to the cause, Nettie ramps up her involvement with the Black Panthers, preparing and serving free breakfasts for children, practicing at the shooting range with Melvin, taking courses on history and throwing herself over to the fervor demanded of the party. Clia notes her friend’s commitment, as does Tante Mado. Her academic studies fall by the wayside. Though she feigns level-headedness around Melvin (“Men were all the same in the same childish ways, she thought”), her passion for the cause soon evolves into a deep attraction for the man and for the “fun” of the drama he creates in his wake.

As an interlocutor of the heated moment, Nettie is a complicated woman who carries the burden of being the hard-working future physician that the community had “all been waiting for,” while also hearing her father’s challenge that “the words only matter if you can participate in its revolution” in her head. Freedom remains the refrain of the day with marriage perceived as a bourgeois act. Sex and love are always secondary to revolution.

Clia and Nettie continue to pursue an undefined intimacy while also finding themselves drawn to the orbit of the party’s charismatic men. In time, Clia breaks away and leaves Oakland for the promise of orange groves in Florida, warning Nettie, “This revolution is not a game. … Be strong, and trust your instincts. Always.” Without her friend, Nettie’s safe distance from Melvin collapses and the two succumb to an all-consuming affair within the confines of this “paramilitary structure that demanded him to obey” — and she too in short order. It is hard to distinguish between their public service and their private devotion.

The novel, too, gets subsumed by Nettie’s headlong commitment to Melvin and the cause. The swelling battle cry becomes: “Burn this world down and build another one” together. Anchored to him by a pregnancy, Nettie follows Melvin to Chicago where the stakes grow higher and federal surveillance tightens its grip on the Black Panthers. The unfamiliar city and Melvin’s emotional volatility wreak havoc on Nettie’s sense of well-being. Soon a “passion for disaster,” marked by involvement with the Weathermen, snitches, intimidation and drugs threatens to destroy everything she holds dear.

With soaring language and impeccable historical research, Josaphat captures the rhetoric and hyperbole of the time. The stark, macho loyalty tests (“It’s not a game. You are either in or you’re out.”) stand in contrast with Nettie’s memories of Clia and moments of matriarchal “unification” and “nurturing” that she experiences after a shattering loss.

While so many others joined the cause in search of higher purpose and direction, Nettie had always possessed an iconoclastic zeal for justice and compassion. Ultimately, it’s a new, pastoral freedom that saves her. It’s an emotional and geographic shift that marks a new beginning and recognizes the momentum of activism; not quite utopia, but something perhaps nearby. Josaphat’s vivid, bracing novel reveals the collateral damage of violent social change while reminding us that a better, more peaceful world is possible.

Lauren LeBlanc is a board member of the National Book Critics Circle.