Fruit of the Devil

by Mary Flodin

Overview

Ms. Aurora Bourne would do anything to protect her students from harm … even if that means going up against the most powerful corporation on the planet.

While getting her classroom ready for Fall, Aurora feels sick, and it’s more than back-to-school-blues. Strawberry fields nearby have just been fumigated and pesticides are drifting into the classrooms. Soon, a spate of serious health issues crop up in children and adults around the school. Then the teenage sister of a migrant student goes missing from the strawberry fields, and Aurora realizes that pesticides aren’t the only threat to her students’ safety. She begins to understand why the farmworkers call strawberries Fruta del Diablo — the Fruit of the Devil.

Aurora starts asking questions and gets caught in a web of gangs, drugs, trafficking, and high-level corporate crime. When a Catholic priest comes to her aid, she falls in love with him, complicating her life further. She has no idea he’s actually an ancient nature god out of Pacific Coast indigenous legends.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940163336869
Publisher:	Paper Angel Press
Publication date:	10/15/2019
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Before settling into the writer’s life, Mary taught environmental education, English, and art for over twenty-five years in California public schools.

She lives in a cottage on the Central California Coast with her husband — a retired NASA climate scientist — and their dog, koi, chickens, and gopher herd, where she spends her time practicing permaculture gardening, plein air painting, making pottery, bird watching, swimming, and enjoying life on the Monterey Bay … and, of course, writing.

Editorial Reviews

2020-07-08
An environmental thriller in which a California teacher travels to a parallel world.

It’s 1998 in Santa Cruz, California, where Aurora Bourne is a fourth grade teacher, an ardent surfer, and a lover of nature. The city faces many problems, ranging from poor conditions that farm workers must endure to financial cutbacks to the local school system. Aurora gets particularly fired up, however, by the fact that toxic methyl bromide is being used in the strawberry industry, as she sees that the dangerous chemical is adversely affecting the local population. Francis Hilman, like Aurora, is determined to fight for what’s right; the two meet on a group hike centered on exploring physics in nature. They have an instant, mutual attraction, which is complicated by the fact that Francis is a Catholic priest. After Aurora dives into a local swimming hole, she discovers an alternative version of Earth that exists alongside the one that she knows. Francis informs her that the other version of the world is experiencing its own problems, and although Aurora’s major battle may be with the strawberry industry, the story goes on to encompass the illegal removal of swallows’ nests; far more serious crimes involving sex trafficking and gang violence; and the ghost of a murdered boy. Despite the many different narrative elements, the sharp focus on Aurora herself allows the tale to progress steadily. At more than 600 pages in length, the book will prove to be a challenging ride for some, but it’s a consistently entertaining one. However, the dialogue sometimes sounds as if it were lifted from an informational brochure, as when Francis explains the importance of the Monterey Submarine Canyon by saying, “Seasonal currents bring cold water upwelling from down deep, loaded with rich nutrients.” Between such textbooklike moments, though, there’s plenty of action to keep things lively; in the wilds of California, even a well-intentioned beach cleanup can turn ugly, and terrors, both natural and human-made, can await in the woods.

A crowded but memorable account of a righteous quest.

Kirkus Reviews