The earth, a girl's hands, the warming -- what does this portend for us all?
Athena, a 16-year-old student, wants to do her part to solve the climate crisis. But it's not easy for her. Her best friend, Mary, does not believe that global warming is a problem. Mary’s views are influenced by her father. Athena’s views are in spite of her father, who makes life difficult for her because of what she believes.
My new novel is ATHENA: a teenager fights the climate crisis.
With the help of her two 10-year-old twin sisters, Athena conducts three-person protests in the small town of El Centro, an agricultural community in the southwestern section of California. Her efforts produce no results, but she perseveres and keeps thinking about what more she can do to help the international movement.
Finally, she posts a YouTube video about a rare hurricane that strikes her desert community where it hardly ever rains, and this video goes viral. Now with thousands of followers, she calls for school strikes. The difference between what she wants students to do and what they are already doing around the world is that she encourages them to protest not just one day a week but every day. Students agree with her, and this tactic totally disrupts the educational system and get the media to report daily on what she calls the Children’s Rights Movement.
Big oil companies don’t like it, and they get the federal government to step in and threaten the students and their parents. The students reluctantly go back to school, but Athena doesn’t give up. She next gets her followers to protest on weekends against major companies using fossil fuels. Then her Instagram account, which she has used to communicate with her followers is hacked and disabled along with her other social media accounts. She suspects the federal government, at the insistence of the oil companies, has done it.
The weather worsens across the country and around the world. Now unable to contact her followers, Athena gives up. Her followers move on to other things. She has not even been able to get her best friend, Mary, to believe in her. The international cause continues on but without the impact of the brief disruption of nearly the entire educational system in the United States.
She and her family are threatened by angry followers of the President, who has denounced them as unpatriotic. Her father banishes her to her room until she recants. Mary ends their lifelong friendship because she doesn’t want to lose her other friends. Athena agrees to her father’s conditions for getting out of her room. Her mother wants her to go to a school dance. Half-heartedly she goes. No one, including Mary, talks to her. A storm rages outside. Athena leaves and is pushed by heavy wind into an irrigation canal. She is about to drown when two hands pull her up. It is Mary. They are reconciled. The next day Mary says she now believes in her friend and says that they must get back on the fight against the climate crisis. Athena finds that her Instagram account is back online.
Together they get their followers to come back, and they continue their efforts to lead the children’s movement in the U.S. in conjunction with the other groups fighting alongside them. The weather gets worse and worse. Now Corporations and governments no longer resist their efforts. It is a matter of survival for everyone.
The question is: Will the children be able to save the world from the climate crisis caused by global warming?
This novel by Rick McManus can be found on Amazon.com Another novel by the author about the climate crisis, EMPTY EARTH, can also be found on Amazon.com.