Blog Archives
Controlling Knowledge is Power
The Secret of Charley Grace follows a fourteen-year-old girl who discovers her DNA may hold the secret to disease resistance and extraordinary longevity, making her the target of powerful forces that want to control this knowledge. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
My stories are always drawn from the news. The Secret of Charley Grace came after reading about the worldwide stir that was created when a Chinese researcher named He Jiankui edited the genes of twin girls before they were born to remove the possibility of being infected by HIV. For his breakthrough bioengineering efforts, He was found guilty of conducting “illegal medical practices” and sentenced to 3 years in prison. As the pandemic overwhelmed the world, I wondered what might happen if a husband-wife team of Chinese researchers were to attempt to protect their unborn daughter from COVID and other diseases and extend her life to twice the normal limit. Would the Chinese government be willing to share her revolutionary biotechnology with the world? Or would they seek to cover it up and prevent its dissemination at all costs?
Charley is highly capable but still emotionally vulnerable. Why did you choose a fourteen-year-old girl as the person at the center of such an enormous international struggle?
I tried to imagine the confusion and fear of a teenaged girl who, while very intelligent, fluent in multiple languages, and trained in martial arts, is yet unaware of who she really is, or why her parents have seemingly abandoned her, and why people are desperate to capture or kill her. Forced to flee from the only home and family member she knows, the target of threats she has no knowledge of and with no one she can trust, Charley’s unique genetic gift is the crucible that will test not only her character, but that of everyone else in the novel.
Greed appears in several forms throughout the novel. What interested you about exploring how different people might respond to something as potentially valuable as Charley’s genetics?
Since before Biblical times, greed has been a powerful universal force causing unhappiness and criminal behavior. With the addition of today’s social media to traditional media, we are constantly exposed to millionaires and billionaires, physically attractive celebrities, and the false promise of fame and fortune if we only buy the right lottery ticket, invest in the right stock, or attract enough followers. Biotechnology offers not only incredible benefits, but also enormous profits. The desire to achieve incredible wealth can unfortunately lead to mistakes, such as COVID-19, or unethical objectives, such as the design of deadly bioweapons.
Beneath all the action, how important was the question of Charley’s right to determine her own identity and future, and does her story leave room for further exploration of the scientific and personal consequences of what she represents?
I believe Charley’s story is just beginning. Her right to live her life as she chooses, free from the threat of capture or death, is improbable due to the nature of human beings and their institutions. To own or control revolutionary scientific knowledge like Charley’s edited DNA, or nuclear weapons technology, or artificial intelligence, is to own power. Power, however, corrupts. Regulating such power is the role of government, but without transparency, governments can be corrupted. A free and unbiased media is perhaps the only tool we have to monitor the potential dangers we face. Yet, as we have seen, even the media can become corrupt. This situation will continue to produce conspiracy theories — which provide a rich trove of storytelling possibilities for writers like me! — but increases conflict and decreases peace of mind for everyone.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook
What she doesn’t yet know is that she is the first human genetically edited to be immune to disease and destined for an extraordinary lifespan. But she is also a target.
Those desiring unimaginable profits seek her biotechnology secrets for themselves: Chinese intelligence, Russian agents, the Sinaloa Cartel, big pharma, rogue billionaires,and even factions within the U.S. government. Her only ally is Ray Nelson, an emotionally-scarred truck driver on the run from his wife’s killers with his dog, Patsy. As they flee across the Arizona desert to the Las Vegas Strip and beyond, they enlist an intrepid band of outcasts who become Charley’s shield—and her family.
Building upon the success of Colin Kersey’s previous award-winning novel, Swimming with the Angels, the Secret of Charley Grace is a relentless page-turning thriller about greed, redemption, and a girl the world sees as a lab specimen—but who refuses to be anything less than fully human.
The Secret of Charley Grace
Colin Kersey’s The Secret of Charley Grace is a contemporary action thriller that starts at full speed and keeps widening its scope. Fourteen-year-old Charley Grace has spent most of her life hiding in Mexico without understanding why, until an attack leaves her alone and forces her north. Her path eventually crosses with Ray Nelson, a fugitive truck driver carrying plenty of danger from his own past, and Patsy, the remarkably perceptive dog who brings them together. What begins as a tense survival story quickly becomes a cross-border crime thriller involving the Sinaloa Cartel, Chinese intelligence, American government agencies, human traffickers, and anyone else who realizes how valuable Charley might be. The setup gives the novel a cinematic feel from the beginning, while the mystery surrounding “Alpha Girl” provides the larger conspiracy driving the chase.
The novel’s most effective ingredient is the relationship that gradually forms around Charley. Ray is already living under an assumed identity when he finds her, and his decision to protect this frightened teenager gives his own fugitive life a new purpose. Veterinarian Anita Cosay soon becomes part of that circle, along with Patsy and an increasingly colorful group of allies. Kersey makes found family as important as gunfights or escapes, and that emotional thread gives this conspiracy thriller more warmth than its body count might suggest. Charley is particularly engaging because she’s capable without seeming untouched by what happens to her. Her martial arts training, intelligence, musical discipline, and ability to think under pressure repeatedly help her survive, but she still grieves, gets scared, wants someone to trust, and desperately misses the family she’s lost. That balance makes her easy to root for.
As a political thriller and biotech techno-thriller, The Secret of Charley Grace goes big. The mystery eventually reaches into CRISPR, experimental genetic engineering, longevity research, pharmaceutical interests, surveillance technology, government secrecy, and the enormous financial value that could be attached to one extraordinary human genome. Charley may represent the possibility of radically extended life and resistance to disease, which turns a fourteen-year-old girl into something governments, corporations, criminals, and wealthy individuals want to possess. Kersey embraces the heightened nature of that premise, throwing his characters through shootouts, kidnappings, cartel pursuits, Las Vegas casinos, human trafficking operations, helicopters, covert agencies, desert hideouts, and eventually an escape by sea. The result is a maximalist suspense novel that frequently reads like an action movie, with short chapters and changing points of view keeping another threat close at hand.
I liked the way all that chaos circles back to the question of who gets to decide the value of a human life. To nearly everyone hunting Charley, she’s genetic material, political leverage, scientific property, or a fortune waiting to be collected. To Ray, Anita, Patsy, and the people willing to risk themselves for her, she’s simply Charley. That distinction gives the action thriller its emotional center. By the final chapters, the scientific secret has become public enough to reduce its usefulness as something that can be privately controlled, but Charley herself can never completely escape being hunted. Her real victory is more personal: she ends the story surrounded by people she can call Mom, Dad, aunt, and uncle, while Ray finally finds the family he thought his old life had taken from him. The Secret of Charley Grace combines the velocity of a crime thriller, the paranoia of a conspiracy thriller, the ideas of a biotech thriller, and the emotional pull of a found-family story into one ambitious, eventful ride.
Pages: 390 | ASIN : B0HD97DY99
