“An inspiring plea to take climate change seriously.
We definitely learn a lot while enjoying the story. If we can’t reach people with reason, maybe a good novel will do the job.” Amazon 5 Star review
She followed Route 114, which would connect her to the South Ferry, and then on to East Hampton to make her delivery of local leaf greens—so prized by the gourmands of the East End.
After Cristina lost her farm to housing developers the restaurants would need to source their greens elsewhere. But eventually, as the farms were gobbled up, the summer tourists would stop coming out to enjoy their precious farm-to-table produce and to pick pumpkins in the fall. They would long for the sight of the farms and shorelines and instead see McMansions, big box stores, and strip malls. They would reminisce about the bay scallops they’d once enjoyed, now gone because of global warming. This restaurant would buy greens from California, which was dying of thirst while quenching square miles of almond orchards, or from Chile, air freighting its carbon footprint into the bank of climate change. Because the local supply of greens had dried up, the restaurant’s well-off clientele would be bilked out of quality food.
This was the commitment she was making, to support the alternative to the profit-fueled industrial diet—the old-world economic appetite for consumer packaged goods—with all its preservatives. Poison food. Sipho and Sam would, of course, understand what she was doing. Both were already deeply committed to changing their world. Gida had made the sacrifice too. She’d broken free of the vortex that was converting the ecosystem into a septic system.
Was that why Raf and Cristina had not shown a manic obsession to find her? They both knew Gida had made a commitment to a greater good—one they, and the comfortably numb, could not make. She had set the example and Allison could no longer wait it out to see what happened. It was already happening—Sipho and the boy needed her help.
Allison’s commitment to a new world order would have to wait a little longer. She saw it all so clearly now.
She pulled onto the shoulder of the road and turned off the headlights. This was her opportunity to clear out the miasma that had glommed onto her since her release. Her small act of defiance could make a difference between heaven and hell. Or it could be a stultifying nothingburger. This anxious paradise had failed her in its promising ravishment. It wasn’t the zephyr of contentment she thought it might be. And it never would be—unless she tried.
She made a U-turn.