PARADIGM
I’ve spent most of my life on my knees, in the soil, or standing quietly at the edge of a forest trying to understand what I was looking at. As a biologist, gardener, painter, and amateur naturalist, nature has never been an abstraction for me. It has been my workplace, my classroom, and my inspiration.
What I’ve learned, after a lifetime of working with plants, of studying them, is how all lifeforms fit so perfectly into Earth’s natural processes, that there is a consciousness and intelligence in all life forms, that they have learned over billions of years that survival depends on cooperation, not competition. They are generous, adaptive, synergistic and interdependent. They ask very little of us. Mostly, they ask that we pay attention, that we learn from their ancient wisdom.
Which brings me to PARADIGM, my debut novel, just published on Amazon. It is a story about a world rushing blindly toward collapse by rapid industrialization and urbanization, wars, the rise of totalitarianism, a destabilizing climate, and an elite bent on maintaining their position at the top, no matter what. (Sounds just like our current world!) Just when it seems like things couldn’t get any worse, a deadly Pandemic strikes, driving humanity toward extinction.
It is a story involving complex issues and ideologies, of entrenched beliefs, of greed and inequality, and how they can come together to throw the world into crisis. The story stems from a question I've been asking myself for years. "What would it take for humanity to come together, to get past those competing and self serving ideologies, to collectively and seriously work together to solve our problems?" It would, I think, require us to be facing collapse and extinction in the near term, not in the far, distant future. That is the tale I have tried to weave here.
My goal here is to call attention to the crisis we have brought upon ourselves, and how important it is that we deal with it before everything unravels and we lose control.
The Storyline...
By the late 2020s, converging crises are pushing civilization to the breaking point. Climate disasters are intensifying, economies are faltering, and authoritarian regimes are on the rise, tightening their grip. Humanity stands on the brink of collapse.
In the spring of 2027 the virus strikes.
When Australia’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Gary Sanders, announces the start of another RSV season, characterizing it as routine, investigative reporter Sara Campbell isn’t buying it. She knows Gary and senses he is hiding a terrible truth.
Within weeks, a mutated virus strain engulfs the world in a deadly Pandemic, killing 95% of all newborn children. As the deaths mount, efforts to produce a vaccine fail, and humanity faces something it never thought possible. Extinction.
Then, rumors emerge from the remote northern forests of Canada: some children may be immune!
Gary and Sara, sent as part of a team to investigate the rumor, discover something miraculous. An ancient partnership between forest-dwelling organisms holds the key to a natural anti-viral… and human survival. But this symbiotic partnership is imperiled by a warming planet. To save itself, humanity must also save the Earth.
What follows is a desperate race against time in a struggle between the few - the rich and powerful - who are committed to the status quo, and the many – Indigenous Peoples, scientists, doctors, factory workers, and the rest of humanity – who hunger for a just world.
