Monday, August 31, 2009

Primitive-Mark Nykanen

Primitive
Mark Nykanen
Bell Bridge, Oct 2009, $16.95
ISBN: 9780982175644

Renowned model Sonya Adams has no prior notice of a shoot for the Frontier Ahead in Bozeman, Montana, but tells Chatwin Modeling Agency agent Jackson she will be there. She is disappointed that her twenty-three years old obstinate, opinioned offspring Darcy failed to return her call, but that will not prevent her from catching the flight tonight from Denver tonight. Still she feels a little better when she is able to take Darcy out for her birthday before catching the one-hour flight.

Sonya is abducted in the Bozeman airport and taken to an isolated area hours from the city. The Council of Consensus survival group informs Sonya she has been found guilty by the Earth’s Court of Justice for championing “rampant consumption”. They explain her choices are to die brutally or speak up against what she stood for as the cult possesses top secret proof that the feds lied about the timeline of global warming; which is yesterday. The cult blows up a refinery to the shock of most Americans who consider them terrorists and uses Sonya as their spokesperson with authorities assuming she is a victim of the Stockholm syndrome. Though they picture themselves as Malcolm X to Al Gore’s Martin Luther King, none of the Council factored in Darcy’s obstinacy; she is coming for her mom in spite of eco-terrorists, government, oil or Queen Katie Corwin preferring mother and daughter to come home in body bags.

This is an exciting gripping thriller that hooks the audience from the onset when Sonya is kidnapped and never slows down even when terrorists overdo the explanations. The story line is fast-paced built off the premise that global warming is not a theory or in the future, but reality already beyond the point of return as the earth. A profound cautionary tale, Mark Nykanen makes a strong argument that to save economies but not the earth seems like Gregory Bateson’s double bind theory with a touch of weak tea from Lewis Carroll’s Bread and butter fly dilemma.

Harriet Klausner

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