My goal when I was writing The Drowning Bay was to tease out that  “aha!” moment when the reader suddenly knows how the themes of the story informs its premise. I don’t want to waste anyone’s time. I want the reader to say they understood, they learned, they felt what the protagonist felt. But the synergistic effect of the themes add that extra value to the read. It’s the embers of the themes that I strive to keep glowing after you’ve read the last sentence of The Drowning Bay.

Is breaking the law for a greater good ethical?

One of my beta readers, after reading The Drowning Bay, said she enjoyed pondering the question of law-breaking for the greater good. She added that she enjoyed pondering “whether altruism at large is more important than those people in your inner circle.”

These paired themes in The Drowning Bay confront Allison, the story’s protagonist. The catalyst of the battle between altruism and rebellion is Sam, the son of the missing environmental activist, Gida. As Allison tries to navigate her own freedom, her conscience anticipates Sam’s heartbreak inflicted by his missing mother. Allison can see that Gida is counting on the enduring love and support of her husband and son until such time—and if ever—she saves the bay. However, her expectation of loyalty becomes increasingly unreasonable.

Allison—the outsider, comes into this family unit and exposes Gida’s assumption for what it seems to be—selfishness. She finds out that Gida’s attitude is an uncomfortable mirror of her own self-absorbed obsession with her struggle to redefine herself.

Altruism or bravery?

The nagging thing about altruism is its potential for hypocrisy. Is concern for the welfare of others ever truly selfless? After all, doesn’t helping others make you a better person? What Allison grapples with is how Gida manages to pull off her outrageous act of abandonment while being totally virtuous. However, the more Allison learns, secondhand, about Gida, a remarkably brave woman, the more she starts to see that Gida has sacrificed. She’s lived most of her life for a greater good and her hypocrisy begins to look saintly.

Escaping the love of a tyrant.

As I wrote in A Fado for the River (Book One of the trilogy), Gida came from a poor Portuguese family and, upon graduation from college seized an opportunity to better herself in the colony of Mozambique. But when she arrived she realized she’d fallen for a trap set by human traffickers. To escape, she accepted the kindness of a married man only to realize he wanted a lover, but eventually loved her and wanted her to bear his child. But Raf, a footloose student at the time, falls in love with Gida just as the Carnation Revolution spills over into the colony. Raf and Gida are caught between the warring factions of the colonial regime, a military coup and the rebels fighting for self-determination. Gida, knowing what it’s like to be exploited, sympathizes with the locals and rejects her European culture. So, she bravely sacrifices her freedom and becomes a double agent, saving many from the murdering “mercy” missions. When Raf finds her years later, they adopt a boy, to whom she devotes her new American life.

Can the unconditional love of agape be hurtful?

Allison comes to understand that Gida’s life of sacrifice has led her to this point in time: when she must sacrifice again for a greater good.  How could Gida leave her husband and son? Gida, like her followers, believes that global warming will continue until it robs her son of his future. The gravity of her altruism, the agape, the unconditional love she feels for the planet is authentic in the context of her past. Understanding this motivates Allison to break the law herself in order to help the boy find his mother. She reasons that, if the greater good is important enough for Gida to sacrifice her family, then she too might break the law in order to reunite a son with his mother.

The stakes are high for Allison, but it is Gida’s agonizing backstory that gives Allison the credence she needs to risk helping the boy. In Atone for the Ivory Cloud, (Book Two of the trilogy) Allison barely survives the terror at the hands of ivory traffickers. Her bravery was outmatched only by her panic when she siphoned off the stolen bitcoin and it disappeared into the ether. Prison time closed that book in her life. However, any violation of her parole would send her back there.

Tolerance leads to a greater good.

The Drowning Bay is the manifestation of the themes in the previous two novels. They lend credence to the character conflicts that unfold in the third novel. It is my hope that after reading it the reader ponders the themes, and after not too long will derive the premise, which I hope is what I want to the book to say: that it is tolerance that leads to the greater good—not the other way round.

I hope that the embers of these themes in The Drowning Bay glow for you, as we Americans start to rebuild our environmental protections after the devastation of the previous four years: According to research from Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School and other sources, The New York Times counts more than 80 environmental rules and regulations officially reversed, revoked or otherwise rolled back. ( https://nyti.ms/2FzhGBm )

In this context, the reconciliation between family, altruism and conscientious rebellion seems like a responsibility—for everyone who cares about our future and our planet.

~GW.