A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense.

Digger wants nothing to do with Cally’s fantasy of being a family of three instead, he saw surrogacy as “creepy as hell.” Cally’s journey comes to a mostly inevitable conclusion, forecasted by the chapter where the characters negotiate the contract.Īre we not men? We are-well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).Ī zombie apocalypse is one thing. Cally’s journey away from the hospital, Hal, and Ruth isn’t directed by much of a plan the search to find her is short. “That’s why I play Final Fantasy VII on Playstation,” one of Hal's sons says in a flashback, letting us know he’s squarely in 1997. The story is told from all four characters' points of view, though some of the weaker ones feel like the results of an exercise in Googling cultural touchpoints. Author Halleen’s background as an attorney shines as flashback chapters delve into the minutiae of contract law, but the plot is easy to predict.

” She starts daydreaming about a new life with Digger and the infant: “Why couldn’t we be one of those families? Weren’t we just like anybody else?” Hal and Ruth are terrified and understandably angry that she disappeared. “When I saw her,” Cally says, “and the way she looked at me, I just…couldn’t. Cally’s old boyfriend Digger picks them up in his truck and they head north. Days after giving birth, though, Cally splits from the hospital, sneaking the infant out. “I believed it would be the ultimate bond,” she says. It’s Hal’s second marriage, and he’s only marginally interested in having another child, but Ruth envisions a baby as the glue that will bind her family together. Cally needs the cash, and Type A Ruth has always dreamed of being a mother.

A contract for surrogacy goes predictably bad in this debut novel told from multiple points of view.Ĭally is 20, impressionable, and optimistic in 2001 when she signs the papers to become a surrogate for Hal Olson and Ruth Martin.

The surrogate by toni halleen