BLACKDOT (80,000 words) is set just beyond global warming when America has overcome the crisis of climate change with a rewarding culture.
Amani thinks her father is weird. He has been arrested for growing invasive weeds in his backyard greenhouse. Everyone knows that invasives pose a serious threat to the Sustainable Earth and cannot be tolerated. Yet Amani listens to her father’s explanations and a part of her wants to understand him. She is more like her father than she suspects.
Amani is drawn to the beautiful purple flowers that grow outside of town. She knows they are invasive. She confides in her boyfriend who, like all proud Americans, has evangelical environmental views. Her boyfriend betrays her and has her patch of flowers incinerated by the authorities. Amani is abandoned by her boyfriend and feels alienated from society for the thoughts she harbours. Although she hopes to repair her relationship with her father, she is compelled to run away.
During her journey, she develops confidence and a new connection with the environment that is very different from her friends and family back home – more like her father. From unlikely sources and people that she meets along the way, Amani reconciles with her father’s perspective. She dearly hopes to return home and to her family, but she is now so far away.
