Snowfall on Mars
The new book by Branden Frankel
Twenty years ago, life on Earth was annihilated. Now, the few remaining colonists on Mars scratch out their living in the worn husk of New Houston, a once vibrant settlement. Outside its walls, a perpetual storm rages - acidic snow and rain - the result of a failed attempt to terraform the planet decades earlier. The human race, once numbering in the billions, has dwindled to five hundred or so souls.
David Adler has survived in these circumstances by keeping a low profile and minding his own business. But when he gets a knock on the door from his old flame, Oksana Levi, everything changes.
Mars’ lead engineer and Oksana’s current boyfriend, Carl Epstein, has been brutally murdered in his workshop, and Oksana pleads for Adler’s help. Adler soon finds himself pulling at the threads of a conspiracy by a millenarian cult and its bloodthirsty father figure to do away with life on the red planet once and for all.
??? Praise for Snowfall on Mars
Trent Teti, founder and Chief Creative Officer at Blueprint LSAT, said of Snowfall on Mars, "Like many post-apocalyptic stories, it's about people trying to make sense out of a chaotic world. The characters are extremely well drawn and complex -- simultaneously sympathetic and not. The real story involves their existential struggle with a bleak circumstance. Frankel has given us characters that exceed our expectations and even provoke us to think. Snowfall on Mars establishes him as an important new voice in the genre."
??? About the book, in the author's own words
"You can certainly call it dystopian fiction, but what I aimed to do was use a big concept backdrop -- hundreds of colonists marooned on Mars after the destruction of life on Earth -- to tell the story of people with deep, complicated, and enduring ties to one another," Frankel said. "Writing the book with that as my focus resulted in what I like to think is a compelling account of what could happen when people, fallible as they are, confront challenges that are unavoidable and seemingly unconquerable."
??? About the author
Branden Frankel is one of those who wanders and is, at least sometimes, lost. From philosophy, to music production, the practice of law, teaching, and raising a kid, he has dipped a figurative toe into many a metaphorical body of water.
At 34, after divorce and a career change, Branden began writing fiction, finding his second passion ”" fatherhood being the first. He lives in Los Angeles, CA with his daughter, Lilah, and Steve, their shockingly aggressive betta fish.