After garnering the attention of more than 7,200 visitors to its Amazon’s KindleScout book page in October and residing on the site’s “Hot and Trending” list for most of its month-long campaign, the novel “High Ground” was released as both an eBook and a paperback on Amazon.com this week. Set in rural Maine, the novel is the story of a small town left by the wayside by a long-departed mill, faced with a new threat in the form of a 21st century robber-baron.
A high-tech firm has reactivated a retired World War II naval airstrip nearby to begin testing an airborne laser weapon prototype. Their jets pass near only one property on their way to the skies above the North Atlantic, the dilapidated, once-grand mansion of long-dead mill owner Fehrman Brandt, a home apparently abandoned upon the death of Brandt’s wife ten years before.
As testing begins in earnest toward a Defense Department deadline, the company becomes aware that one surviving member of the Brandt family still remains in the darkened building. Brandt’s daughter, Esther, is the family’s lone survivor. She is an electromagnetic hypersensitive who shuns all forms of radio waves from broadcast transmissions, to the fields produced by telephone and electric wires. As the jets pass over her home nightly, Esther is tormented by searing pain as she huddles in the kitchen under its tin ceiling and iron pot racks.
She must turn for help to townspeople who have been ground to dust by her long-dead father and his long-closed mill. They are not rushing to her aid. When the town becomes aware of Esther’s predicament, they must choose between an old hatred and forgiveness, or stand by and watch another company destroy another life in their home town.
“High Ground” is available in Amazon eBook and paperback editions, and is also available to Kindle Unlimited subscribers or via the Kindle Owners Lending Library.
Richard Authier Lee 