This spring, the massive earthquake that devastated Japan triggered a crushing tsunami that crippled the country’s nuclear power grid, releasing contaminating levels of radiation from the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. In response, Germany has sworn off nuclear power. On our own shores, the earthquake that shocked the Eastern seaboard sent Virginia’s North Anna nuclear plant, located 10 miles from the quake’s epicenter, into “cold shutdown” as the quake exceeded the ground motion its two reactors were designed to handle. Then Irene boiled up the coast. What if it had been a category 3 or 4 hurricane? What if the earthquake had lasted 30 seconds longer?
Now, in a convincing novel that runs tantalizingly close to nonfiction, Erin Brockovich combines the timely topics of safe power production, ongoing severe weather, and consumer activism. Her feisty and fearless environmental activist and single mom A.J. Palladino is back, and in Hot Water (Vanguard Press; November 2011; $25.99), the fast-paced and dramatic follow-up to Erin’s debut thriller Rock Bottom.
Once again exploring the issues she champions every day as an environmental and consumer advocate, Brockovich has crafted a compelling, can’t-put-it-down “cause” work, dedicated to the victims of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, that encourages people take control of their lives with the goal of preserving our environment and our future.
A.J. and her whip-smart, special-needs 9-year-old son David are still struggling with the loss of David’s father — a death blamed on A.J. by many in her Scotia, West Virginia hometown — when Owen
Grandel, the owner of a new nuclear facility designed to create medical isotopes with the potential to save millions of lives, knocks on her door. His offer? If she will use her high profile as “The People’s Champion” to help him convince protesters that his plant is safe, he will pay a cool $1 million, plus a $10,000 bonus for David’s education. Worried that she might be making a deal with the devil, A.J. agrees to leave for South Carolina after learning that further protestor delays could cost lives. Soon, her simple business trip spirals into disaster.
Her beloved grandmother Flora suffers a near-fatal accident back home, and David’s grandfather — the powerful and ruthless coal king Kyle Masterson — threatens in court for “emergency custody” of David, painting A.J. as an unfit mother. At the nuclear plant, someone is setting false radiation-leak alarms and activists are planning to steal the next shipment of radioactive isotopes, all to scare and destabilize the community. As A.J. hunts the homegrown terrorist who is attempting to take control of the nuclear plant, she is caught off-guard by the most crushing blow — her son disappears.
While A.J. works furiously to help restore plant operations before the damage escalates and meltdown occurs, her associate Elizabeth Hardy confronts the legal action brought by Masterson and calls on A.J.’s best friend from childhood, sheriff’s deputy Ty Stillwater, to help find the boy. Apprehensive and trying to secure David’s safe return, A.J., Elizabeth, and Ty are unaware that A.J. has become the prime target of a hit man.
Writing with award-winning medical suspense author C.J. Lyons, Erin Brockovich skillfully combines an irresistible can-do heroine and captivating characters with her hope of empowering people to take up the cause of keeping our environment clean and our natural resources protected. Hot Water is a thrilling novel that pulls you into the swirling tumult and does not let you go.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
New York Times bestselling author Erin Brockovich was a legal clerk when she pursued evidence that amounted to the largest toxic tort injury settlement in U.S. history, forcing utility giant Pacific Gas & Electric to pay out $333 million in damages for contaminating the ground water of Hinkley, CA. Her story became the blockbuster movie “Erin Brockovich” that earned Julia Roberts an Academy Award. The next year, she published her New York Times bestselling motivational autobiography Take It From Me. Active on the motivational speaking circuit, with a thriving lecture series and a television talk show in development, Erin hosted ABC-TV’s “Challenge America with Erin Brockovich” and Lifetime’s
“Final Justice.” As president of Brockovich Research and Consulting, Brockovich continues her legal work and consults on numerous investigations into toxic spills, water and soil contamination, unexplained cancer clusters, fracking (a process used by oil and gas companies that contaminates ground water supplies), and other health hazards countrywide. She lives in Los Angeles. For more information, please visit www.brockovich.com
C.J. Lyons is a New York Times bestselling author. An award-winning medical suspense writer, her new book Blind Faith hit #2 on the New York Times Best Sellers list and is a USA Today bestseller, as well.