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Panacea

by Robert J. Thompson

322 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #02-0365; ISBN 1-55369-552-6; US$26.00, C$30.00, EUR21.50, £15.00

Mainstream political thriller with romantic storyline. PANACEA explores personal challenges, living with the past, twists of fate, intrigue, murder, friendships, and ultimate redemption.

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about the book      about the author      sample excerpts      catalogue info

About the Book Robert J. Thompson's PANACEA explores the realms of mystery, murder, politics, relationships and humor; ultimately revealing the rewards of growing up selflessly. A lawyer himself, Thompson writes about a young Chicago attorney named Rick Morrissey who hopes to find a more fulfilling personal and professional life while on an extended vacation to the Florida panhandle where he spent his formative years. "Rick, like many single men his age, is a 31 year old man, in a 22 year old's body, with an 18 year old's psyche, holding everything worldly yet personally bankrupt because of his chosen lifestyle," says Thompson. The book follows Rick in his travels down south where he has a chance meeting with Delaney Chase, a young woman who never had a chance to be a child due to her difficult upbringing in the small town of Panacea, Florida. Although Delaney was raised right in the southern way, she is tormented by the mysterious death of her father in 1988's Hurricane Gilbert when she was 10 years old. Further complicating Delaney's childhood was her mother's daily battle with alcoholism and placement in a psychiatric institute due to mental illness and schizophrenia after her husband's death. Delaney's father, Pally Chase, had been a commercial fisherman and was well-known locally before his death. Not only did Pally have a fine reputation as a shrimper, he was also a formidable opponent to political and corporate oil giants as a political activist who fought oil drilling efforts off the Florida panhandle in the Gulf of Mexico, costing the oil industry millions of dollars. Rick learns of the strange circumstances surrounding the death of Delaney's father which happened immediately after Pally had successfully blocked oil drilling by the industry's juggernaut, Copperhead Oil Company. Delaney's entire life has been spent on the Florida panhandle, except for her perfunctory visits to see her mother in an Atlanta mental institute. Her fateful encounter with Rick sets the scene for a modern thriller, romance and, finally, closure over Pally Chase's death. Woven among the chapters are colorful, and often times humorous, characters of the current south who provide interesting twists to the story line, adding insight, discovery and mystery. "PANACEA is as timely as current headlines as politicians battle over the issue of oil drilling in the same Gulf region that provides the setting for this book," says Thompson. "It is laced with factual material discussing the authority for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico along with possible consequences that could result from such activity."

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About the Author Bob Thompson is an attorney in his hometown of Dixon, Illinois where he lives with his Golden Retriever, "Fynn." This is his first novel.

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Sample Excerpts

CHAPTER 2

The young woman, who never had a chance to be a girl, woke up alone to a sun-drenched morning in the Florida panhandle craving her two cups of coffee and a twinkie. The panhandle was heating up as usual for late September with the night time low of 72 degrees Fahrenheit expected to rise to 85 degrees by midday. The beaten down antebellum home in which the woman awoke was replete with pictures of family, now gone, and paintings of the gulf landscape done by her mentally ill, but talented, mother.

Delaney Chase had been a resident of Panacea, Florida, her entire twenty-one years on earth. She was born a young woman, missing out entirely on her little girl rites of passage like Barbie dolls, jump rope, E-Z bake ovens, hop scotch, fancy dresses, and daydreaming. Born under the guidance of a midwife in the same bedroom she now occupied, Delaney had become used to living alone, and enjoying the solitude. Before Delaney could understand she was a child, her mother, Meredith Chase, had begun her bouts with alcoholism and depression. Delaney struggled throughout childhood searching for her mother's stashed liquor and mouthwash bottles and dumping them down the drain before they abetted Meredith Chase to a point of intoxication. Though the home and lifestyle in which the Chase family lived appeared regal, there were troubled times financially, and the home now reflected that era. Fortunately for the family, the large home they occupied was owned free and clear by Meredith Chase, who'd inherited the property from her parents. Meredith now resided in a home for the mentally ill near Atlanta. Delaney drove the four hour trip there to see her mother once a month.

Delaney was only ten years old when her daddy, Pally Chase, had died. Mr. Chase was a commercial shrimper, and a well-renowned political activist who perished tragically in 1988's Hurricane Gilbert pursuing his one occupation which was his one and only love, besides his daughter. Prior to his death, Chase had been active in political causes such as preservation of the Gulf of Mexico from oil drilling and industrial shipping and development along the coast. Mr. Chase's life was an inspiration to Delaney, as she admired her father and embraced his political beliefs.

Delaney now occupied the family home by herself, while she studied at Florida State University in the College of Education. Delaney's weekdays always started the same. With the coffee maker on timer for six a.m. coffee, Delaney awoke to a fresh brewed morning blend around six thirty. After consuming her two cups of coffee while reading the Tallahassee morning paper and eating a single twinkie, usually just the inside filling, Delaney drove her car to Tallahassee, as she commuted every day to FSU. Typically, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, Delaney would finish school around four o'clock and return to Panacea and Captano's Restaurant where she served food from dinner until close, usually around nine o'clock at night.

Today, Delaney left for college early to meet with some classmates who were all members of a student-based coastline preservation group. Delaney had joined Save Our Shorelines, better known as S.O.S., during the previous spring semester. S.O.S. had been started a year earlier by an adjunct faculty instructor who worked in the Biology Department at FSU. The group's mission was to increase public awareness of the fragile condition of the panhandle shoreline and the industries who were responsible for its decay. Although the group membership was small, only thirty-five students, it was effective in placing banners around Tallahassee and writing letters to the newspapers condemning the cruel greed of the shipping and oil companies who exploited the reserves of the Gulf of Mexico. Delaney felt as though her father would be proud that she was involved in protecting the Gulf waters that fed his family for so many years. To most adults in the community however, S.O.S. was simply a group of liberally minded tree-huggers who enjoyed smoking pot and philosophizing over the greater things in life, like nature, and how mankind seemed to disregard the good mother earth.

S.O.S. didn't seem to be taken seriously until six months earlier when Copperhead Oil Company announced plans to drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico within the authority of a federal government lease proposition. Copperhead planned to begin its drilling operation in the spring of 2001. When S.O.S. heard of the proposal, the group agreed to focus on Copperhead and to try to lobby the legislature to terminate the lease area granted by the government. S.O.S. believed staunchly in their resolve, but agreed from the onset that the group's demonstrations and activities would always be peaceful. Unknown to the rest of the membership, however, two of S.O.S.'s members vowed through an anonymous letter to the Tallahassee newspaper to sabotage the operation by explosive means. The letter smacked of terroristic acts of violence with explosives, and it got the attention of law enforcement and executive officers at Copperhead Oil. It didn't matter that the letter could have been just silly kid stuff from a group of college students too liberal to think clearly. Copperhead considered the threat seriously and embarked on a mission to determine whether the culprits of the letter were their competition or Greenpeace-types with nothing to live for except blocking the corporate expansion of the oil world.

Delaney's ambitions in life were well-focused for a woman her age as she was determined and comfortable in knowing that she would be a school teacher one day and remain active in social causes like S.O.S. She would make herself and her family proud. Although she enjoyed fishing and was excellent with a rod & reel, she knew it would never be a good career choice for her to take over where her father's legacy left off. As Delaney drove away from her home and headed up Route 319 toward Tallahassee, she reflected on the years that had passed since Pally Chase died and how she was becoming a grown woman of whom her father would have been proud. She was only twenty-one and she knew what she wanted in life. What she didn't know was that she would soon be heir to several million dollars and that, for the twentieth day in a row, she was being followed.

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Catalogue Information

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