The Third State - Follis, Mark B

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Résumé :
Elliot Very suspects his PhD committee isn't going to be happy. He's just returned from an agricultural research project in South America and is missing data from one entire sector-Tapiama-and without it he can't meet the study's goals or complete his degree. But all of Elliot's memories of Tapiama are hazy and fill him with a strange sense of dread, so he's unable to offer an explanation or suggest a work-around for the missing information. To his dismay, the committee insists he return to the Amazon. On the flight to Ecuador, Elliot's unease increases. After he learns the project's senior agricultural officer was killed in an apparent automobile accident, unease turns to outright panic and he soon suffers a breakdown, forcing him to return to the States without obtaining his additional data. During sessions with a campus therapist, it becomes clear that something traumatic happened at this study site, something so dismaying that Elliot's mind has suppressed it to the subconscious. Will a return to the project cure him of his fears or escalate into an even greater calamity?

Biographie:
Mark B. Follis spent two decades living and working around the world: he was as an agricultural economist in the US Peace Corps in Fiji; an agricultural machinery representative for International Harvester in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East; and lived in South America while earning a PhD in agroforestry from the University of Florida. Though The Third State is his first novel, he has been published internationally in technical journals and agroforestry textbooks. He is a certified arborist, and now resides in Memphis, Tennessee, where he owns a tree care company specializing in preservation.