Manifest Gluttony

With the exception of a few gallons of frozen urine voided into the vastness of space by astronauts every drop of water the earth has ever had is still here. Whether as a species we have the ability to benefit much longer from this wonderful gift depends entirely on our ability to change. Life will go on in some form, frolicking in these eternal waters long after we are gone, just as it did before we embarked on our journey. Manifest Gluttony is about decisions and the costs tied to them. It is the story of two men and their intersecting pilgrimages across a world they had helped to shape. Several centuries ago word smiths’ re-forged greed, theft, and genocide into a destiny, Manifest Destiny. They justified all manner of crimes under the dubious mantle of god’s special intentions for a racial group. We have in theory discarded the racial elements of this quest and in its place have decreed that progress is measured by possessions and the right and duty to consume should be our legacy. The hero Finly leaves Houston well into the natural and manmade climatic consequences reshaping human existence. His pilgrimage takes him across the desert that had been the Great Plains and north towards a memory of deep forests shrouding pure blue lakes. He has changed from a man of importance to a scavenger scrambling for the crumbs that slip through the hands of more successful predators. Henry Thurbes started his exodus near Los Angeles at the beginning of the catastrophe. Henry’s life and dreams have already been destroyed when the story begins and he is determined to cross the country to see if somewhere in Indiana he can reclaim a life and a family he tossed aside in pursuit of the ever expanding boundary of more. The two men intersect at the beginning of the novel but what brings them to this deserted road ditch is our story.