Eat Your Damn Vegetables: Blight, Space Tourism, Crypto-Judaism, Kidnapping, Jackalopes, and a Hint of the Unfathomable

Eat Your Damn Vegetables: Blight, Space Tourism, Crypto-Judaism, Kidnapping, Jackalopes, and a Hint of the Unfathomable

What if you knew it was the last time you would see someone just by looking at them? It turns out there’s an app for that. When investigative reporter Justine Reconaire gets too close to discovering why a mysterious blight devastated green chile crops across New Mexico, her life is endangered by billionaire entrepreneur Gareth Bryne. Meanwhile, Bryne’s spaceport in the heart of the state is targeted by an anarchist, anti-space tourism group known as the Icarus Society. Justine’s friend Bartel Menardo unwittingly becomes the centerpiece of Justine’s rescue effort while simuteneously steering his ex-girlfriend Aurora, who reappears after two years, away from the most extreme elements of the Icarus Society. Over the course of the weeks-long search for Justine, each of the protagonists makes decisions they would’ve recently considered highly uncharacteristic, reevaluating their lives as new and surprising circumstances arise. Set in the near future, New Mexico’s unique landscape and architecture bind the accounts of the novel’s four separate narrators together as they navigate derelict ghost towns, expansive cave networks, seedy Albuquerque neighborhoods, and luxurious estates in search of Justine and, at the same time, a larger sense of purpose. In the final section of the book, Bryne and his ex-wife and former Miss New Mexico Natalia Mora are exposed for their sinister scheming and dubious motives, both against each other and the main characters. But Justine, Aurora, and Bartel must still make hard decisions that will affect the rest of their lives. “ Eat Your Damn Vegetables” is written in the playful and imaginative style of “The Man Who Died” by Antti Tuomainen with a plot rooted in current events and the cultural zeitgeist similar to “Dark Sky” by C.J. Box. The evocative geography plays a key role in how the story unfolds, much like Nick Harkaway’s “Tigerman” or many Tony or Anne Hillerman novels.