Operation Wind Storm: Manifest Destiny meets the Green Revolution

by Lori Townsend

The U.S. military loses a U.S. Supreme Court battle with environmental organizations over the cleanup of nuclear waste left from former military underground bomb tests on Alaska's Amchitka Island. Shortly after the court decision, a massive earthquake at Amchitka destroys the waste material and kills military contractors who were there to remove it. Russia uses the destruction to spread disinformation, claiming the U.S. was staging new nuclear missiles in the Aleutians, raising international tensions. Meanwhile, resource development devotees and conservationists are anxiously waiting for a remanded part of the decision in the Supreme Court case that would shut down most of the fossil fuel extraction industry. Operation Wind Storm, the third novel in the Zilla Gillette series finds our intrepid reporter, right in the middle of the conflict, reporting on emerging facts. This assignment has Gillette tracking the explosive tensions between environmentalists and development proponents over the growing divide between those who want to end resource development in the name of slowing climate change and those who want to continue to create jobs in the fossil fuel extraction industry. The carbon fuel fans in Alaska are under the leadership of former Arkansas televangelist shyster, Jerry Justice, who enlists the lethal Jamie Lynn Carter, fresh out of prison for the murder of militia leader, General Alex Burke, (Zilla's first assignment in American Home Wrecker). With funding from a Russian operative who is determined to further disrupt and divide Americans, Justice and Carter whip up a deadly fury in Alaska and across the country. Death threats drive environmental organization leaders into hiding, culminating in chaos and a suicidal plane crash in Anchorage during a single day of deadly clashes between the differing ideologies about the best path forward for the future of energy and Democracy in America.

406 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 24, 2020

About the author

Lori Townsend is the Learning Services Coordinator and Engineering Librarian for the University of New Mexico Libraries. Her research interests include threshold concepts and information literacy, academic librarians of color and cultural humility. Lori holds a BA in history from the University of New Mexico and an MLIS from San Jose State University. Before coming to UNM, she worked as the Electronic Collections Librarian at California State University, East Bay from 2005-2010. She is co-author, along with Amy R. Hofer and Silvia Lin Hanick, of the book Transforming Information Literacy Instruction: Threshold Concepts in Theory and Practice (Libraries Unlimited, 2018); she and Silvia Lin Hanick are Series Editors for the just-launched Libraries Unlimited Series on Teaching Information Literacy Today. Lori is a member of the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of Duck Valley.

Reviews

[Carmen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zilla Gillette is a reporter who is relentless about finding and reporting the truth no matter the circumstances. What I love most about the Zilla Gillette Series is that I feel like I am with Zilla in her challenging situations. We laugh and cry together and ultimately the good guys or gals score points. Light and fun reading.

Operation Wind Storm is no different. A story that centers around one of Alaska's environmental versus economic battles, Zilla investigates the facts while thrown into the ring with the greenies on one hand and the uber-right-wing on the other, which gets her into some crazy and life-threatening situations. An Entertaining Read.