Eight weeks before the release of her debut novel, Keira Drake woke up to 50 messages on Twitter asking if she was OK. Her novel, “The Continent,” was to be published in January, and the hardcovers were printed and ready to go.
Drake, a former freelance marketing consultant from Salt Lake City, logged on and saw that her book — which had been circulating in advance reader copies for seven months — had been called racist, and the outcry was growing. Twitter threads live-tweeting the book (many now deleted) burned with angry reactions. Others warned their friends not to read it.