Travesty (SolarSide Book 1)

Do you betray your country or your consciousness?

Stuck between capital punishment for desertion or condoning killing while possibly going insane from experimental field drugs, Peter Verum, a lifelong pacifist and patriot, must answer this question and end the battle in his mind when he receives draft summons to fight in the Sapian-Herculean war.

A prior Junior at college, Peter lives in a society run by a unitary global Party, where all citizens vote by using a phone app and tolerance is enforced to such an extreme that differing opinions can reversely land you in jail. But this is also a society that has been blessed with global peace, Peter’s generation marking a century free of war—until alien Herculeans invade a neighboring colonial planet, Nova Terra. Peter is quickly drafted like thousands of others to meet the threat, and now a year later, he has just returned back to Earth from his tour, but not in the usual way: secretly in fear for his life. Peter has survived something he wasn’t supposed to while deployed, and the information he has that the Party wants to remain a secret can cost him his life.

As the sole survivor that knows the truth behind a botched government cover up on Nova Terra, Peter wonders if anyone will ever believe him. The reason, he has skeletons in his own closet from deployment. But even more damning is his younger self following him around telling him to go back and fight till he dies, or that his only friend is a jealous cloud that encourages him to succumb back to a drug addiction that makes him homicidal. The Party doesn’t need much to prove Peter is clinically insane, but that crucial determination lies on one thing. How did Peter survive when everyone thought he was dead? And what really did happen on Nova Terra? Now as the only witness left Peter retells his story, where maybe along the way he will also figure out what patriotism really is, and what it truly means to be a citizen.

Rejected by agents and publishers alike for being too controversial, Travesty is brought to you by the author himself via Kindle.