THE SHELL

At a naval base sixty miles off the California coast, Hawk records a blue whale’s cries of agony during a sonar test. He is accused of downloading classified information. While fleeing his accusers, the young man stumbles into a hidden world. Before he knows it, he’s running for his life with two Indians called Hummingbird and Mountain Lion.

Hawk’s disappearance and reappearance several days later in the Santa Barbara foothills comes to the attention of a billionaire who fears the young man has uncovered a forbidden path to happiness. Convinced the young man could destroy the financier’s empire as well as his psychological stability, the billionaire hires a lonely and sadistic mercenary to track Hawk down. Spurred on by the young man’s activist grandfather, his family takes cover in a sanctuary in the Redwoods. The move Hawk makes at the last minute expands the horizons of what’s possible and forces each character to decide how she or he will respond.

THE SHELL (80,000 words) draws upon the myths and magic of ancient cultures to tell the tale of a young man who is initiated into the deeper mysteries of the natural world and forced to confront his own capacities for survival and transformation. This is the first of four books in my Turtle Island Rising series.