Deluge

by James D. Best, Rebecca Rundall

Storms, politics, and gangs pummel California but that isn't the scary part. Extreme weather brings death and destruction, but people who panic or exploit a tragedy make natural disasters appear tranquil. Deluge is a disaster story with a basis in actual history. In 1862, a sixty-five-day downpour pummeled the western United States. California suffered the brunt of the storm. Almost a third of the state was under water, roads were impassible, telegraph lines down, rivers overflowed, hundreds of people died, and hundreds of thousands of animals drowned. Sacramento remained under water for six months, forcing the state government to move to San Francisco. Geological evidence shows that a flood of this magnitude hits the western United States every one to two hundred years. What’s happened before can happen again. You can drink water, bathe in it, sprinkle it on a garden, freeze it to chill a drink or a sore back, swim in it, or laze on the surface in a boat or on a floater. Water is an essential element of life, useful and often great fun. But water can also kill. No one who has been hit by a huge ocean wave disrespects moving water. You can’t fight it. You can’t beat it. You can only get out of the way or let it throw you around like a rag doll in a Rottweiler’s grip. Get ready! Mother Nature’s on a rampage.

363 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 29, 2018

About the author

James Best is the author of the bestselling Steve Dancy Tales: The Shopkeeper, Leadville, Murder at Thumb Butte, The Return, Jenny's Revenge, Crossing the Animas, and No Peace. His contemporary Best Thrillers series includes The Shut Mouth Society, Deluge, and The Templar Reprisals. Tempest at Dawn is a classic novelization of the United States Constitutional Convention. Principled Action and The Digital Organization are nonfiction books. James has ghost written three books, authored two regular magazine columns, and published numerous journal articles. As a conference speaker, he has made presentations throughout North America and Europe. He is a member of Western Writers of America, Western Literature Association, and the Pacific Beach Surf Club. James enjoys writing, film, surfing, skiing, and watching his grandchildren play sports and cavort.

His blog address and contact information can be found at http://jamesdbest.blogspot.com/

James and his wife Diane live in Omaha, San Diego, and New York City. (Close to all the things he loves except skiing. Invitations to a mountain cabins gladly accepted.)

Reviews

[John Bishop · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely great read

This is another of the great work that James D. Best is famous for. Riveting from beginning to end. I hated to see the end come as I was fully absorbed in the story. Loved it!

[tartine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good depiction of the ego that occurs between opposing factions of government who this time were presumably working together to solve a catastrophic climate change in California. The nature of man's self-inflation even at the cost of lives. This well-paced account really brings to the forefront what might happen in California, in the case of a one-hundred year flood.

[Jack Rochester · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many, if not most, authors get genre-locked by either their publisher or their audience, denying us the opportunity to see the full range of their interests and talents. Fortunately, that is not the case with author James D. Best. Jim began writing the Steve Dancy westerns a number of years ago, and I’ve enjoyed reading many of these novels. But earlier this year, I read a completely different work of his, The Shut Mouth Society, reviewed at JackBoston. It brought a new dimension to his oeuvre, and to me a new appreciation of his writing talents.

Now I’ve finished another not-Steve-Dancy work, Deluge, his most recent novel. It concerns a natural phenomenon called the atmospheric river, which occurs over California from time to time and dumps an extraordinary amount of rain on the state. Water vapor begins to collect over the Hawaiian Islands, then begins moving across the Pacific toward the West Coast, broaching land and dispersing massive and endless rainstorms all the way to the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Best mentions this in context in his novel, and without calling undue attention to it demonstrates its potential for all-out destruction and social disruption quite realistically. It’s to his credit that he focuses his attention on the human element of the deluge, rather than going all technical on the reader. We read as citizens, law enforcement, academia, politicians and outlaw gangs deal with the deluge. In the process, Best makes this a compelling—indeed frightening—story. Again and again I was impressed with Best’s characterizations and grasp of how profoundly a storm such as this can disrupt life. The potential power of water stayed with me for days.

This is a highly recommended natural disaster thriller, written with acute attention to reality and little, if any, needless melodramatics.

[Valerie Boren]

Did not finish