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The New Madrid Run

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What if the earth came apart at the seams -- and you survived? Within a few terrifying hours the earth's poles shift and modern civilization is shattered...A small band of castaways in the Florida Keys begin the adventure of a lifetime as they sail north in a desperate gambit for survival, but high seas pirates, fierce storms, and ultimately, the man who would be king, stand between them and a place of refuge.

310 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1998

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About the author

Michael Reisig

32 books58 followers
Michael Reisig has been writing professionally for 15 years. He is a former newspaper editor and publisher, an award-winning columnist, and a best-selling novelist.

He is the author of six novels. His works have been optioned for motion pictures, sold to overseas publishers, and produced in CD, audio, and e-book format. He has been featured in magazines such as Writer's Digest and Southern Living, and in numerous newspapers across the country.

Reisig was born in Enid, Oklahoma, in 1948. The first son of a military family, he was raised in Europe and California before moving to Florida. He attended high school and college in the Tampa Bay area. After graduating from college, he relocated to the Florida Keys, establishing a commercial diving business in which he served as the company pilot, traveling extensively throughout the southern hemisphere, diving, treasure hunting, and adventuring.

From there he turned to journalism, putting many of his experiences into the pages of his novels and columns, going on to manage, then own newspapers.

He presently resides in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas where he fishes and hunts and writes his novels, and occasionally escapes to the Caribbean for another adventure.

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5 stars
97 (35%)
4 stars
85 (31%)
3 stars
59 (21%)
2 stars
22 (8%)
1 star
10 (3%)
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
Profile Image for Angela.
586 reviews30 followers
January 31, 2015
I'll give this story 1 1/2 stars for an inventive plot device (polar shift brings about cataclysmic geographic change and its accompanying social and political upheaval) and 1/2 star for everything else.

Cardboard cliches masquerading as characters, hackneyed dialogue, really really bad bad guys, "ethnic" caricatures that are so stereotypically ethnic as to be insulting...it's almost as if the author had a checklist he was ticking off: "Inscrutable Asian guy who's a martial arts master, check. Cute kid traumatized by the death of his parents, check. Tall, shapely, hot blonde for our hero to protect, check. Wild-eyed madman (best friend of hero) who is also an expert ex-military pilot, check..." and so forth. The story managed to keep my interest, but just barely -- this is where the 1/2 star comes in. I still rolled my eyes at every utterly predictable and occasionally ludicrous plot twist.

But you know what? It killed a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon and on the commute today. Mindless genre literature is good for that at least.
Profile Image for Lafcadio.
Author 4 books49 followers
February 20, 2017
Before I get started on the content, I have a beef with the cover: if there were massive flooding due to global warming, sure the Mississippi river might get much wider, but the whole "California falling into the ocean" thing is ridiculous. Seismically and geologically it's impossible, but if we were to suspend reality for a moment and assume that California could, in fact, fall into the ocean, it certainly wouldn't fall into the ocean exactly along political boundaries. The continental crust doesn't know where the state line is. The Siskiyous won't shear themselves in half so that California and only California falls into the ocean.

That aside, this is a great story.
392 reviews3 followers
May 29, 2018
A shift in the Earth's poles results in a series of massive tsunamis and changes to coastlines around the world. The story centres around a pilot in the Florida Keys who narrowly survives the initial event and is lucky enough to find a serviceable boat. Through a series of increasingly unlikely experiences with an even less likely stereotypical group of international survivors, he tries to make his way to his home in Arkansas (where he has bought land in case of an emergency such as this). It's not a book to take too seriously, but it's entertaining enough and I quite enjoyed it.
Profile Image for Tim.
8 reviews2 followers
April 19, 2019
Fun and zany read

Simple fast paced story of a world changing event, brave hero archetype , stereotypical sidekicks with a tough woman that fawns over the main character... like a goofy bad good action movie in a book.
120 reviews4 followers
September 16, 2024
Too good to put down

Great work by the author as he keeps you spell bound with the characters, plot and subplots. Just another of his great stories. Thanks I enjoyed the book, hurry up and give me another one.
37 reviews
January 15, 2019
After reading Swan Song and The Stand, this one isn't very interesting.
Profile Image for Janis Brown.
81 reviews
January 5, 2020
Couldn't put it down

Another well written and exciting book. A scenario that could very well happen. Keep writing!! And keep them available on kindle unlimited please.

Profile Image for Ethan Hennessey.
2 reviews1 follower
May 7, 2021
Eye-rollingly predictable with unoriginal characters, but entertaining nonetheless
59 reviews
September 27, 2020
I truly enjoyed. Kind of scary but probably accurate if climate change has its full effect and society breaks down.
Profile Image for Kerie.
57 reviews
January 7, 2014
I love post-apocalypse fiction so I tried to read this book.

I really did try.

It's awful, but not for the reasons you might think. I'm going to list some of the problems here in the hopes the author might see them and learn do do better, and so that people with actual political awareness are warned before they dive in.

1) You don't call Asian people Orientals. It is really insulting. It is racist. A rug is Oriental. A person has first a name, then a country of origin, and if you MUST generalize about them the term to use is Asian. Or East Asian. Or South Asian. NOT ORIENTAL.

2) Stop racial stereotyping. All Japanese people are not inscrutable. All Latin@s are not thieves, drunks, or dying to eat hamburgers in America. The racial stereotyping in this book was so painful, it's the main reason I put it down.

3) White male saviorism is boring. And also an old tired trope that has no truth in it whatsoever. All the characters on this boat were somehow helpless without the big, strong white male hero. A woman he saw as an object, a boy whose mother just died, and two caricatures of people of color that were described repeatedly as "small" and by their race more often than their name. "The Japanese." "The Cuban." It's insulting and others these characters, further positioning them as backdrop rather than as 3 dimensional human beings.

No doubt there is so much more wrong in this book but I kept smacking my face into these over and over and over again and at a point early on I threw up my hands and deleted this from my Kindle.

Dear author, you have a lot to learn about your white male privilege and white male supremacy. Please study before writing another novel that contains characters of color.
Profile Image for Drew.
774 reviews26 followers
March 5, 2015
“The New Madrid Run” is a giant change of pace from the authors other books. Seeing as I like his other stuff and post-apocalyptic books I thought this one would be right up my alley. It starts off a bit slow (after the catastrophe) so I was having a bit of a hard time getting into it, but about a third of the way through I really got into the story. It’s well written with some interesting main characters that have their faults, quirks and strengths, which is a big contrast to the villains who are a bit static. The plot moves nicely with a good mix of action (after you get through the first part) and is a ton of fun, but I have to say the main set of characters continuous lack of situational awareness drove me crazy (rule one of the apocalypse do not let the hot woman walk around by herself). In the end it’s a fun ride with a little of everything.
26 reviews
December 16, 2015
UNFORTUNATELY, THIS WAS TOTALLY BELIEVABLE!

But fortunately it was also great fun to read. This morning the internet had an article about the possibility that melting polar ice caps are changing the rate of spin of the earth, and the tilt of it's axis. The effects would, of course, be subtle, and over take place over a long period. The rebounding "squashed-be-polar-ice" crust at the poles would change the shape of the Earth, making it rounder.
The violent geological effects that form the premise underlying the plot of this book aren't as far fetched as I would have believed a few years ago, and the author developed that premise, and then built a good story.
451 reviews1 follower
May 12, 2012
Not my cup of tea at all I'm afraid. I rarely find a thriller that thrills me. Endless, tedious, dreary and unlikely blow-by-blow accounts of shoot outs. This one used Samurai Swords and World War II fighter planes to "spice" it up a bit - but I was left cold. The essence of the plot, I thought, was fantastic - what a shame the fleshing out was so poor. And the thing that always bugs me about this genre the most is that the "baddies" are always so BAD and the "goodies" are alwasy so GOOD - putting aside their ability to cold bloodedly kill and torture the badddies.
Profile Image for Beverly.
3,987 reviews26 followers
August 15, 2020
My husband and I were on a motorcycle trip--somewhere west from Indiana--and we stopped at a convenience/gas station. This book was on sale by a local author and it was autographed so I bought it and read it. It wasn't the greatest book but there was lots of action and I'm obsessed with the New Madrid fault since it would probably affect our area if there was ever a big earthquake along that fault line. So I was glad that I found it and it was a great vacation read, didn't expect much more than entertainment.
Profile Image for Todd.
188 reviews
July 9, 2013
This is my second reading of this book, even so this is a predictable book, well written, but predictable. I have always enjoyed end of the world type books so I picked this up years ago. I would have to say the luck this group has is pretty high which allows them to overcome some huge odds, but it allows the story to continue at a good clip. Fun but don't expect anything out of the ordinary.
Profile Image for Wayne Stinnett.
Author 56 books631 followers
April 11, 2014
This first novel by Michael Reisig will have you turning pages, long after you should have gone to bed.

After an apocalyptic natural event, the many well fleshed out characters are thrown together by a mutual desire. Survival, in a world gone haywire.

Earthquakes, tsunamis, and storms abound in this thrill ride of a novel, from the Florida Keys to the mountains of Arkansas.
Profile Image for Sheila .
2,012 reviews
February 27, 2009
A polar shift causes huge earthquakes and tidal waves that destroy large portions of the U.S. This fiction story follows some survivors as they head from Florida to Arkansas, and have run ins with pirates and an evil man with his army.
Profile Image for Paul.
16 reviews
January 28, 2012
A nice easy summer time vacation read. Fill your boots.
Profile Image for Daniel Ace.
227 reviews36 followers
January 19, 2014
The science seemed a little loose but this felt like watching a good, fun B - movie. You could sense some twists coming but it was nice.
Profile Image for jan shelton.
6 reviews
January 4, 2015
Very exciting.

couldn't put it down.Will read more from this author. great winter read.or maybe a good summertime beach read. wherever you find yourself
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews