Grand Traverse

This is not science fiction. Instead, it is a realistic global warming novel for our times, especially these days with storms increasing, arctic ice melting away and glaciers disappearing. Instead of the typical doomsday plot with catastrophes around every corner, the global warming in this novel is real. It eats away at society while the main characters struggle to do what they can. Jamie Carter, whose parents suffer as a result of a chemical spill in the eighties, goes into politics. She is driven to do what she can about the environment through politics. As she matures she meets a Ukrainian man whose family suffered from Chernobyl when he was a boy, and the story also follows their relationship through the years. Meanwhile, Jamie's nemesis, who is also followed in the story, becomes a news anchor and creates all kinds of political and media roadblocks. Although billed as science fiction, Grand Traverse is more a novel of social commentary containing characters we can care about. As such, it has the best elements of a suspense thriller while at the same time providing one scenario for the questionable near future of our planet.

The earth is heading toward pandemic environmental disaster. However, Paul Carter and his family do not worry about the orb as the crisis to them is local. Ducain Chemical contaminated Easthaven. He sues and wins, but his victory is hollow as his beloved wife Judy suffers from breast cancer. Ironically they met during an environmental protest back when Reagan was President. Three decades later Paul's daughter Jamie believes the toxic chemical spill is the pivotal point of her life though she was only two at the time. She successfully becomes a political activist, a soldier, "Chemical Jamie", in the war to save the embattled planet. Heather West seeks vengeance from the family that successfully won a lawsuit against her father that ruined him and destroyed her heritage. When she makes it big time on television, it furthers her life's goal to destroy the internationally popular daughter of the man who devastated her dad. The two daughters are on a collision course that has global impact neither of their fathers could have remotely envisioned. Michael Beres paints a bleak ashen future on a planet devastated by environmental disasters. The story line focuses on how the two women react to the key identical incident in their respective lives. One uses this to become a crusader while the other uses it to spread culpability on others for what she and her family lost. There is no question on what side of the environment argument Mr. Beres is on as his twenty-first century looks as if mankind is one step away from extinction yet a thousand points of light still shine with hope to save the world. Harriet Klausner