Robert Rayner Livres

When heavy November rains threaten to flood the small town of Black River, New Brunswick, the community calls on the hydroelectric company to open the gates of its dam and drop the water level. But local management has been overruled by its parent company and ordered to keep it closed. Seventeen-year-old Stanton Frame is caught in the middle. His father is manager at the local dam, but his girlfriend, Jessica, has joined an environmental group that is worried about the threat of the dam flooding Black River. Suspenseful and authentic, celebrated YA author Robert Rayner's new novel combines activism, love and mystery.

Robert Rayner's latest novel based in New Brunswick shows how the encroachment of age in a rural community's life exposes it to the perils of progress. White Rock Island, an isolated rural community, becomes a defiant island of souls intent on preserving itself when it is threatened by economic decisions of the provincial and federal government which tax it but threaten to withhold services that would sustain the community. When a bigger, stronger entity threatens a much smaller one, the outcome seems easy to predict. But no man is an island. For with age, nearly every community changes. But the social and institutional bonds that invigorate the social life of any community can change in an ending or a resurrection. Larger social forces that necessarily interact with the settled and simple lives of such communities, usually rural, as they attempt to survive in the face of economic forces that they do not control often decide the prospect.

He said slowly, "You know how sometimes something happens, and afterwards you think what you could have - should have - done, if only you had the nerve and the confidence to do it, but of course by the time you think that, it's too late." Isolde nodded. Wenden mumbled, "Only, like, all the time." "Well - it's like having the nerve and the confidence to do it straight off, at the moment you need to do it," said Ridge. Life changes quickly from carefree, innocent fun to desperate survival when teen friends Ridge, Isolde and Wenden inadvertently transgress their city state's strict rules of conduct and morality. They are sent to a remote institution for 'retraining', from which they escape, only to find themselves wandering an empty wilderness as they are hunted by the ruthless guards of the state. In order to survive, they draw on abilities they didn't know they possessed. They call it Going to Colorland. They're happy to go there. But afraid of not coming back.

In the middle of the night, five teens break into a small-town high school to protest the decision to close the school and move them to a big city school. Led by Bilan, whose experience with the Arab Spring fired a passion to peacefully fight against injustice, the Gang of Five occupy their old school. The local police chief and the town quietly cheer them on. When the school board calls in a security firm to break up their occupation using any means necessary, including force, the Five have to decide how far they will go to show their outrage at having no control over decisions that affect their lives.