Fatherless, by James Dobson and Kurt Bruner

Since James Dobson retired as president of of Focus on the Family, he has taken on a new role: novelist.  With some help from coauthor Kurt Bruner, he tells a pretty good story in his new novel, Fatherless.  Set a generation in the future, Dobson envisions a society in which marriage is rare, children are genetically screened and selected, and the elderly and disabled are "transitioned" (killed by assisted suicide).

These are the demographic changes and challenges that I rarely see addressed in fiction or science fiction.  The strongest and most important social and political point Dobson makes in the story is simple: a nation's greatest resource is its people.  Thus, children are an investment not only in the future of a family, but in the future of a nation.  Only a few conservatives in Fatherless realize and appreciate this fact, but the point is, of course, to draw attention to people today who don't acknowledge it.  American liberals, environmentalists, and Chinese bureaucrats believe that limiting the number of children will have social and economic benefits, yet the opposite turns out to be true.

As you might expect, Dobson shows a great deal of insider's perspective as he talks about political life, church life, and family life.  He puts it together into a readable, compelling story.  The end petered out a little bit, almost as if Dobson didn't know how quite to wind it up.  But I enjoyed it enough to look forward to reading the sequel, Childless.