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As a junior reporter with the Des Moines Register, Mark Mallory daydreams of bigger and better things. When he sees a local TV report of a crop circle appearance on a farm near Ames, Iowa, he knows it's time to graduate from his "Iowa Life" social announcements and move into investigative reporting. But Mark gets more than he bargained for when his research takes him to a live missile site that he knows should have been retired along with many others that were deactivated decades before. The woman whose farm the installation is on confesses that she and her late husband have received monthly rent checks from the federal government for over four decades. When she drives Mark to the site, the appearance of a man in a black suit shows Mark that his life is taking far stranger turns than he could ever imagine.
This lively Christian sci-fi novel jumps right on the UFO/ET bandwagon and jets off into government conspiracy territory. The story's pace is fast but not frenetic, taking some twists and turns both predictable and surprising. Mark and his ISU undergrad friends are distinctly characterized and highly relatable. Religion and spirituality of one sort or another play a role in the main characters' lives, so readers should be prepared to dip a toe into a less metaphysical tale and one within a strong Christian milieu. Some readers will likely see themselves in these college-age characters, whose varied approaches to dealing with everyday hurdles and life's mysteries are often thought-provoking and relatively non-prescriptive. A plot thread involving Mark is left unresolved and presumably is the focus of the next book of the series. The cliffhanger at the end should guarantee readership for the second installment.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review