American fatwa coming to a bookstore near you

The first chapter of Doug Marlette's novel, The Bridge, is titled: "A Gift for P---ing People Off." Although the novel is only loosely autobiographical, Marlette's work as both prize-winning political cartoonist and novelist has proved his title true.

As the year wraps up, Marlette is on the receiving end of an Islamist fatwa protesting a dead-on editorial cartoon that ran last week, while his novel is struggling against a continuing tide of opposition from unseen but powerful forces.

Marlette's cartoon, which has prompted thousands of threatening e-mails, depicts a man dressed in Middle-Eastern garb driving a Ryder truck bearing a nuclear missile with the caption: "What would Mohammed drive?"

Outrage, especially from literal-minded religious folk, is familiar territory to Marlette. He won a Pulitzer in 1988 for his skewering of holy duo Jimmy and Tammy Faye Bakker of the infamous Praise The Lord club. Let's just say that Marlette is an equal-opportunity offender. It ain't personal.

What has become weirdly personal, however, is the truly bizarre attack on Marlette's first novel, a riveting tale of the Carolina cotton mill strikes of the 1930s. The Bridge (HarperCollins), published a year ago and now out in paperback, tells the story through the eyes of protagonist Pick Cantrell, who happens to be a political cartoonist.

The story of the mill strikes is historically accurate. What is not historically accurate is the depiction of some of the "social" characters in the book. They are, as often happens in works of fiction, fictional.

Yet several people in Marlette's current home of Hillsborough, N.C. (aka Hillqaeda)