Snowflake

How far would you go to protect our future? A gifted high school student at an elite academy decides he must assassinate the president as an act of environmental protection.

Ben Wallace, 18, is a brilliant high school senior who obsessively reads scientific papers about climate change. After a mind-altering experience and two near tragedies, Ben decides he must take drastic action against the climate-denying President of the United States. He will save his generation in an act of planetary self-defense.

At the wealthy private school he attends on scholarship, Ben is isolated from the other students who appear - on Instagram anyway - not to have a care in the world. But despite giving up all social media, Ben's riddled with anxiety. Skipping his meds and therapist to prepare for his mission isn't helping, and it complicates the situation with his family as his actions take on a life of their own.

During the six weeks leading up to his drastic plan, Ben goes to a gun show and is almost entrapped by two military types. It's a bust, and he realizes he'll never get close enough to the president with a gun. Instead, he hatches a realistic hi-tech strategy, meticulously prepping for the daunting challenge he faces.

Throughout, Ben, an unlikely assassin, grapples with the philosophical, practical, and moral reasons that make his actions necessary. Mr. Hale, Ben's STEM teacher and a former Navy Seal, sees that his best student is struggling and takes him under his wing. But Hale makes a fateful mistake of his own by ignoring the signs of Ben's unraveling. As the events tighten into a thriller with a shocking ending, Ben's not sure who is crazy. And neither are we.

Snowflake is a literary novel with a narrative structure that springs from Ben's brief journal entries, a ritual that helps him process his overactive mind into a singular confessional voice. Equal parts thriller, think piece, and spiritual journey, the book is a fiction/nonfiction hybrid that swims the current of our craziest cultural waters. But the science that Ben cites is real, the politics are current, and the attacks against our environment are accurate - so the themes are mature.