ABSTRACT
In terms of gender, however, it is this innovative portrayal of female strength and leadership that offers a refreshing alternative to formulaic romance plots all too often privileged in YA ction as well as providing an alternative story of the nation from phallocratic territorialism. The strength of the trilogy’s gender politics is paramount to its reimagining and repositioning of the Scottish nation. Bertagna’s contribution to the literary map of postdevolution and, more recently, post-referendum Scotland is a vital component in envisioning new pathways for the nation and responds to current geopolitical concerns regarding globalisation and neoliberalism. In this chapter, I will focus upon her trilogy’s cosmopolitical and cosmofeminist engagement with such concerns and the ways in which it can be read as
offering a vital new narrative that encourages a dynamic trajectory for the nation’s journey within and beyond its borders. It is a call for its YA readers to politically engage with the narration of their nation, so that ‘how the story ends all depends on you’ (Aurora 144) because ‘Exodus is your story too’ (Aurora 249). Bertagna’s characters are aware of the unxed openness of the journey on which they have embarked and its potential to enable narrative self-empowerment so that home can be relocated in a consideration of its relations with others rather than remain statically insular.
