The Caretaker Trilogy
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The Caretaker Trilogy is a series of science fiction thrillers with an ecological theme, written for young adults by the award-winning American novelist and screenwriter, David Klass. The first book in the series, Firestorm (2007), was the first book ever endorsed by Greenpeace[1] and was praised by critics for its combination of entertainment value and environmental message, garnering an American Library Association (ALA) Best Book citation,[2] a starred review from Publishers Weekly,[3] and a favorable review by the New York Times Book Review.[4] The story focuses on Jack Danielson, a teenager sent back from the future to save the world’s oceans. Whirlwind, the second book in the Caretaker Trilogy, tells the story of Jack’s efforts to save the Amazon rain forest; published in March 2008 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The third book in the trilogy is Timelock, to be published in 2009.[5]
Firestorm has been optioned by Warner Bros. and the production company Thunder Road. A screenplay for the movie version is in active development.[6]
Contents |
[edit] Novels
[edit] Firestorm
Jack Danielson is a normal 17-year-old growing up in Hadley-by-Hudson, starring on the high school football team and dating the lovely P.J. Then Jack wins his high school football game and is featured on the local news, and everything changes. Strange creatures from the Dark Army show up to hunt his family down, killing his parents just as Jack learns they are not really his parents after all. Jack flees to New York, where he partners up with a large telepathic dog named Gisco. They flee down the Eastern Seaboard, pursued by enemies they cannot always identify, never sure whom to trust. Even Eko, the ninja babe who saves him time and again and teaches him extraordinary survival skills, seems to have ambiguous loyalties.
Gradually Jack learns that he is from 1000 years in the future, when the earth is an ecological wasteland. His true parents are among the Caretakers, who live in that future, and he has been sent back to the present, to the Turning Point, the last opportunity to stop the environmental disasters that the Dark Army has set in play in order to ruin the world.
In one action-packed sequence after another, Jack must face the diabolical Dargon, sent back from the future by the Dark Army with insidious plans to trigger the ruin of the world’s oceans. While Jack succeeds in foiling Dargon’s plot, Firestorm’s cliff-hanger ending leaves readers agonizing over his extraordinary personal sacrifice.
[edit] Whirlwind
In Whirlwind, Jack returns to Hadley-by-Hudson to see P.J., the only remaining touchstone from his shattered reality. When he discovers that she is missing, he quickly suspects that it is the work of the Dark Army. Jack sets off to rescue P.J., once again pairing up with Gisco, his telepathic canine sidekick. Their quest takes them to the heart of the Amazon rainforest, where Jack learns that he has another mission to fulfill for the Caretakers. In order to save the world at the Turning Point, Jack must now save the Amazon rainforest, the “world’s lungs,” from destruction, while pursuing his personal quest to save P.J. To succeed in both missions, Jack must find another time traveler, the wizard Kidah, who has disappeared in the present, and work together to defeat the colonel, Dargon’s father, the Dark Lord from the future. Once again, the ninja babe Eko appears to assist him, complicating his determination to remain faithful to P.J. Jack will prevail in Whirlwind, but the Dark Army will try one last time to destroy the earth’s environment. In Timelock, Jack’s story will conclude as he works to save the world from global warming.
