About A Nation Born
Not all world powers hold the best intentions, especially when precious resources are at stake. Just ask Maggie McCoy — a grieving mother who has borne loss upon loss at the hands of Australian officials on her native Norfolk Island, a 14-square-mile territory in the vast Pacific Ocean.
Maggie has lost a husband and a sister, along with hundreds of neighbors, to a crisis exacerbated by government neglect. Once the same government causes a more painful loss, revenge is her only path forward. A violent independence struggle for her island home becomes a useful vehicle for payback. Her oldest son, Nate, has a world-changing discovery that can help fund the fight, but only if Nate and Maggie can conquer the gulf of abandonment between them.
A Nation Born is a female-driven political thriller with elements of military technothriller and flourishes of cyberpunk dystopia. It becomes a tragic lesson in “being careful what you wish for.” Most of all, this is a story of a broken family healing itself.
“What makes A Nation Born such a compelling political thriller is its plausibility. Eric Smith’s compassion for the people and landscape of Norfolk Island is matched by his capacity for weaving together geopolitics, pandemics, and the rapacious greed of corporations and countries. We have witnessed in our lifetimes how the passion of a people for their homeland will push even the mightiest military to its knees.”
—Amy Paige Condon, journalist and author of A Nervous Man Shouldn’t Be Here in the First Place
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Author Bio:
Eric Smith is a software consultant by trade and a lifelong foreign affairs and military history obsessive at heart.
That's just great, but how does that background result an author? Passion for a place.
A couple of decades ago, a friend told Eric about Pitcairn Island honey. "The finest in the world." That triggered a deep dive into the history of a tiny, breathtakingly isolated place and their people. Then came a pivot to the conjoined history of the people of Norfolk Island. Turns out that Norfolk is fighting a very real fight to retain their self determination. It is a fight they are not currently winning.
A few years of obsession and contacts made across the thousands of miles led to a kernel of a story: what if tiny little Norfolk Island could borrow enough money to put up an armed resistance? What would that look like?
Fast forward through a few more years of research, writing classes, and shattered drafts and "A Nation Born" was born.
Eric hopes to pay homage to his favorite authors and genres with his writing. The military techno thriller as pioneered by Tom Clancy. The rapid fire physics and humor of Andy Weir. The heart string plucks of quiet family stories.