Don Elwell

The Ganymeade Protocol, Revised Edition Don Elwell

Katie has a problem. As a young woman in an increasingly repressive world, it seems every day more options are closed to her, and surprising changes in her relationship with her girlhood friend Sandy are apt to land both of them in a state reeducation camp. When her stepfather begins making noises about "finding her a suitable husband." Kate knew she had to do something. What that something would be is a bit of an issue. The newly unified Europe is off limits to Americans, as are the shining cities of Surinam and Venezuela, and crossing the heavily fortified Canadian border is out of the question. But out on the warming waters of the Gulf and Caribbean sails The Fleet, a collection of small boats with its roots in the pirates of the early 19th century. it is a place of artists and rebels and iconoclasts, of dangerous free spirits and pirates, circling endlessly in the waters, rafting when they can, sailing when they must. The righteous government of America hates them with a passion. It's said, in the Fleet, you can be anything you say you are. It's said, in the Fleet, there are no rules, no judgments, only the freedom to be who you are. And out at the docks sits the little sailboat Ganymeade, lovingly built by Kate and her late Father before the cancer had eaten him. Kate has a plan. A plan to escape with Sandy, a plan to be free, and despite the threat of insane governments, religious wackos, and looming natural disasters, a plan to, just maybe, become part of something greater than herself. She calls it the Ganymeade Protocol.