Agent Aliyah Aurea with the FBI Division of Environmental Crimes is tenacious. That character trait might be why she gets attacked in a North Dakota prairie pothole by a woman with a sharpened gardening trowel and held hostage in the back of an SUV deep in the Appalachian Mountains.
Aliyah is determined to build her career solving environmental crimes at the expense of her love life and often her personal safety. When a menacing poem lands in her inbox, posted by an unknown group of climate activists, Aliyah is plunged into an undercover mission in the dead of a Wisconsin winter. In this and other cases, she must navigate awkward alliances with the likes of a geologist rabbi, an imposing small town public works director, and a dyslexic botanist with a vendetta. Along the way, Aliyah draws inspiration from the family stories of her great grandmother, Packy, a root doctor in a Black, rural Georgia community before the family migrated north in the 1950s.
When Aliyah uncovers a stealth organization intent on thwarting environmental progress stretching back to the presidency of Andrew Jackson, she makes a life-altering decision. Will it cost her life?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: David J. Hirschman is not an environment detective, per se, but has spent four decades working to bring understanding to the issues of water pollution and ecosystem protection. He has spent much of that time collaborating with colleagues on the massive endeavor to restore the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The trials and travails of Agent Aliyah Aurea, although entirely fictional, reflect the very same issues he has encountered in his professional career. You can often catch him riding his bicycle around Charlottesville, Virginia, where he resides with his wife Garnett, an occasional adult child sojourning in their hometown for a while, and a large red maple tree.
Dave also operates a small environmental consulting business, Hirschman Water & Environment, LLC. He works on small and large stormwater projects; conducts training events and workshops for environmental professionals, students, workforce program participants, and other audiences; and works collaboratively with other organization to improve water quality and build more resilient communities.
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