About the book, Reap the Wind

• Genre: Action-Adventure / Suspense / Climate Change / EcoThriller
• Publisher: Milford House Press, an imprint of Sunbury Books, Inc.
• Date of Publication: February 6, 2024
• Number of Pages: 215 pages
• Scroll down for Giveaway

THE PERFECT STORM meets THE FIRM.

Reap the Wind is a thrilling action/adventure novel that follows three lawyers as they embark on a treacherous journey from Houston to Cincinnati during a catastrophic hurricane. Josh Goldberg is on a mission to be with his girlfriend for the birth of their child. Along the way, they’ll face terrifying obstacles like tornadoes, hailstorms, and driving rain. But the real danger may come from within as they struggle to survive each other’s company. His two travel companions—his best friend, a drug-addicted lawyer, and his conniving boss who has her own agenda.

Don’t miss out on this unforgettable odyssey that might just be a suicide trip.

Praise for this book:

“Reap the Wind is a bold, bracing and blisteringly original take on the legal thriller form. Joel Burcat has fashioned a seminal tale focusing on the nightmare of all road trips in which a storm raging outside the car is matched only by the storm raging within. Burcat dares to tread on the hallowed ground of John Grisham and Scott Turow and ends up blazing a fresh, daring literary tale of his own. Not to be missed!” —Jon Land, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author

Buy, read, and discuss this book:

Amazon │Sunbury Books | >Midtown Scholar Bookstore (signed copies) | Goodreads

About the author, Joel Burcat

Joel Burcat is an award-winning author of three environmental legal thrillers: Drink to Every Beast (illegal dumping of toxic waste), Amid Rage (a coal mine permit battle), and Strange Fire (a fracking dispute). His most recent book, Reap the Wind, is about three lawyers trying to drive from Houston to Cincinnati in a climate change-induced hurricane.

He has received a number of awards, including the Gold Medal for environmental fiction from Readers’ Favorite for Strange Fire, and as a Finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards for Amid Rage.  He has written numerous short stories. Burcat imbues his novels with facts to educate his readers about critical environmental issues while they are being entertained by the story.

Burcat’s books are infused with realism developed over a forty plus year career as an environmental lawyer.

Connect with Joel:

Website | Instagram | Facebook | Newsletter | X (Twitter) | BookBub | Amazon | Goodreads | LinkedIn

My Thoughts

Joel Burcat’s new novel Reap the Wind is described as “The Perfect Storm meets The Firm,” and that’s accurate to a point, but I feel like it’s more a mixture of those two stories with a soupçon of No Exit. At only 215 pages, it’s a fast read, but a meaty one with thrills, spills, and chills of various intensities.

Told from the perspective of two main characters, Josh and Keisha, and engaged couple who are about to have a baby, this story quickly splits into parallel plots when Josh is delayed in Houston after a business trip, and Keisha has a medical emergency on her flight to Philadelphia.

Keisha’s story then becomes a medical tale – she’s injured, about to have a baby, and stuck in a hospital in Cincinnati (she had a layover there) where she has to confront her past and make choices about her future. Meanwhile, Josh conscripts his friend Greg to join him on a mad dash from Houston to Cincinnati so he can be there for Keisha. When their colleague Diane insinuates herself into their trip, which they make in a second-hand limousine – it becomes the worst road trio ever. And did I mention that there’s a major hurricane disrupting weather in the entire eastern third of the United States?

Josh and Keisha are both written as sympathetic, if flawed, characters, and I found myself rooting for a romantic comedy ending, even though this novel is more of a thriller with a lot of emotional undertones.

Greg, Diane, and Abdul (the limo driver) are all interesting, though clearly created to serve the narrative. I wasn’t terribly invested in either of their stories and felt like their purpose was more to be obstacles in Josh’s path than fully realized human beings. Despite this, the novel is richer for their presence. Without them, you’d just have a lonely guy driving through a storm.

The storm, Hurricane Epsilon, is a character in its own right, and author Burcat did a fantastic job of making it the villain and the catalyst without ever actually personifying it.  Yes, it felt at times like the weather was taunting all of these characters, but it was just the well-crafted perception the author created. Climate change and the government and corporate responses to it is also part of the connective tissue of this novel. Perhaps, then, Climate Change is the villain, and the hurricane is its henchman.

Overall, I felt this was an interesting novel. It starts off slow but ends up careening through plot points like a car fishtailing on a storm-drenched highway. It kept my attention, and I would definitely read more of Burcat’s work.

I was slightly disappointed that the scenes with the Weather Service hurricane hunter that bookended the novel were there only to demonstrate the capriciousness of weather and the danger of not heeding warnings – I would love to read an entire book about that crew.

Goes well with: Hot roast beef sandwiches and steak fries.

Giveaway

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THREE WINNERS:

Signed copy of REAP THE WIND

(US only; ends midnight, CDT, 03/15/24)

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