To The Last Drop: A Novel of Water, Oppression, and Rebellion

by Andrew Wice

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared in a recent United Nations address: "Too often, where we need water we find guns instead. Population growth will make the problem worse. So will climate change. As the global economy grows, so will its thirst. Many more conflicts lie just over the horizon." Anticipating what might happen when this declaration comes true, To The Last Drop foreshadows what might happen when water reserves and resources decline in the immediate future. As written in this thrilling novel, when this critical resource dries up, governments may need to exploit every option at their disposal to secure water - even resorting to warfare. In such turmoil, individuals will have to defend their water rights by any means necessary in order to secure their livelihood, including armed insurgency. Such an imminent crisis exists between Texas and New Mexico, which have fought bitterly over water rights since the early nineteenth century. The pattern of a Texan invasion followed by New Mexican resistance is brought to the present day in To The Last Drop. Taken from this morning's headlines, the novel is narrated by a tragic-comic cast from all sides of the conflict. Exploring the development of the Southwest, the relationship between oppression and terrorism, and our unquenchable thirst for water, Andrew Wice's novel provides much more then just a fictional tale.

324 pages, Paperback

First published April 21, 2008

About the author

Andrew Wice is a novelist, Pushcart-nominated haikuist, and freelance journalist. His debut novel, To The Last Drop (Bauu Press, 2008), about a present-day water war between Texas and New Mexico, received four out of five stars from High Times Magazine (April, 2009). Wice grew up in New Jersey and Washington, D.C. and holds a B.A. in English Literature from Macalester College. He currently lives in Madrid, NM.

Reviews

[Alexis]

An excerpt from my 2008 interview with author Andrew Wice:

"I enjoy reading and writing with multiple narrators. Faulkner's As I Lay Dying was the first novel I read in which a storyline is told from many points of view, some of which contradict each other. A novel can be considered an orange, and each self-contained narrative is like a distinct segment. When each segment is separated, there's so much more surface area. As the orange is opened up, its facets multiply.

In the case of To The Last Drop, I thought the story would be too dry and depressing if it were told from a classic third-person God's eye perspective. Drought, war, terrorism … I never would have finished writing it. The humor and the life in the book are entirely character based."

Read the full interview here.

[Tyler Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I ran into this book when my man and I were strolling around Madrid, NM. I didn't buy it, my pockets being generally empty, but I was glad to find it a day later available as a Kindle book and zapped it down to my iPad, incidentally my first non-reference electronic book.

I have to admit, this book pushed a lot of my buttons as a pugnaciously proud New Mexican. It was visceral and personal to me, like watching a friend's punk band play and going crazy in the moment of it. Maybe it's not perfect, but in some vicarious way, it feels like you're a part of it.

That was exactly how I felt reading this book; I took it really personally! I've been almost everywhere that this book takes place around New Mexico. I know these places, I know the cliffs, I know the roads, I know the desert stretches. I even found myself becoming aggressive and angry through certain passages, descriptions of injustices to both people and places, to my dear New Mexico and it's characters. And again, admittedly, it activated and agitated my own prejudices, those prejudices that I normally keep tucked away and disregarded. This is indeed a visceral book, but especially for a New Mexican.

It does lean on types, certainly, and it has a certain pulp content. But that said, these people, these characters, are real. Some of them I know personally, some of them I have been screaming at on the TV for the past 10 years, some of them are in my own family. The types hold up, the situations are (mostly) plausible. Someone completely unconnected to the regionalism of the narrative could easily, just as I also did, take this as a cypher for some other war.

Read it as pulp, read it as allegory, read it as propaganda, read it as whatever. It's knee deep in profanity and violence, so don't give it to your abuelita for Christmas (unless she's got a mouth to match or maybe a teardrop tattoo). But I do recommend this book. It's a great read and I enjoyed it immensely. I hope that this fellow gets another published, I would buy it in a heartbeat.

[Flash Gordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared in a recent United Nations address: "Too often, where we need water we find guns instead. Population growth will make the problem worse. So will climate change. As the global economy grows, so will its thirst. Many more conflicts lie just over the horizon." Anticipating what might happen when this declaration comes true, To The Last Drop foreshadows what might happen when water reserves and resources decline in the immediate future. As written in this thrilling novel, when this critical resource dries up, governments may need to exploit every option at their disposal to secure water - even resorting to warfare. In such turmoil, individuals will have to defend their water rights by any means necessary in order to secure their livelihood, including armed insurgency. Such an imminent crisis exists between Texas and New Mexico, which have fought bitterly over water rights since the early nineteenth century. The pattern of a Texan invasion followed by New Mexican resistance is brought to the present day in To The Last Drop. Taken from this morning's headlines, the novel is narrated by a tragic-comic cast from all sides of the conflict. Exploring the development of the Southwest, the relationship between oppression and terrorism, and our unquenchable thirst for water, Andrew Wice's novel provides much more then just a fictional tale.

To The Last Drop: A Novel of Water, Oppression, and Rebellion

[Mikael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will not claim any sense of neutrality for this book. It is the first published novel of my friend Andrew Wice and it is great. His talent for description is on display through out the novel set in scenic, but dry, New Mexico, where he resides. A war of water and some easy to hate antagonists and hard to love protagonists. The story is told by numerous narrators and this varied POV helps keep the account honest.

An amazing accomplishment and good read.

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific! This is a real gem. It is a sort of allegory of the present told as if it's the future. The characters are hysterical. It's funny, randy and suspenseful. You will read the last 80 pages in one sitting- on the edge of your seat.

[Samuel Kordik · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book suffers from poor writing, terrible characters, and an unfortunately ill-conceived and impossible plot.

The writing is full of cliches and short on variety; sentence structure is poor and feels like it lacked any kind of editing.

The characters have all the depth of a cardboard cutout and the likability of an irate skunk. The cast was certainly colorful, but varied from completely psychotic to sadistic and racist to arrogant and ugly. Realism was almost completely thrown out the window.

The plot was set in modern-day America, but was beyond impossible. Most of the implausibilities were glossed over with awkward exposition, and the story remained impossible to even imagine occurring.

Its possible this book would have worked—with a lot of stylistic editing help—if it ended up being the crazed imaginings of one of the more delusional, most likely mentally-ill protagonists. But this wasn't explored or even hinted at.

I applaud the author's chutzpah in selling this book.

[Hanna · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you have never spent any serious time in New Mexico I would not recommend reading this book. Even if you have, I'm not sure I would recommend it. I read it because it was written by a local guy and I felt obligated. Parts of it are pretty good, especially in the first half of the novel, and Wice does a good job with the vernacular of some of his characters. Actually, he does a very decent caricature of several stereotypical New Mexican and Texan archetypes. The premise of the story is intriguing as well. However, the story unfolds in a way that is so implausible that one must suspend all disbelief to read it, yet there is no framework built up to suspend that disbelief within. It is both rooted in our present society and in total disregard of how our world works. And some of his descriptions are just laughable. Like when two tv producers from mid-2000s California show up to talk to the Governor in outfits straight out of Magnum PI and Saturday Night Fever.