Pursuit of Cause

Bryan Pierce, a wealthy venture capitalist, disappeared while glider flying over the Sierra Nevada. After three months of intensive searching, neither Pierce nor his sailplane was ever found. Officials concluded the pilot had encountered severe turbulence and that the aircraft had disintegrated into small pieces, now spread across the vast mountain range. Months later, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Elaine Towers begins receiving anonymous messages suggesting that Bryan Pierce was not lost by accident. He had become a liability in a covert entanglement between the corporate world and high-stakes politics. The insinuation was clear. Elaine Towers hires former NTSB investigator Tony La Porte to locate the missing glider in the rugged Sierra Nevada and then, impossibly, to determine the cause: was it foul play or simply an accident? La Porte reluctantly accepts the case, knowing the mountains are large and the odds of success small. During his search, he discovers that nature now plays a more violent form of climate hardball and that others are keenly interested in what he may uncover. Tossed into a vortex of intrigue, danger, and confusion, La Porte stumbles into the blurry shadows that obscure the lines between cause and blame.