Author S. I. McDonald’s New Book The Atavist Effect: Rika’s Run

Author S. I. McDonald’s New Book The Atavist Effect: Rika’s Run

New York, NY, April 17, 2024 –– S. I. McDonald, a debut author and educator who currently resides in Alaska, has completed his new book, “The Atavist Effect: Rika’s Run”: a compelling speculative fiction story that explores how the world collapsed in the late twenty-first century, leading to the age of cold-steam and the maker cultures that put faith, family, and freedom against overwhelmingly powerful odds.

Born in the shadow of NASA’s Cape Canaveral in Florida, author S. I. McDonald raised his children in the shade of Kodiak Island’s rocket launch facility nicknamed the Other Cape. McDonald and his wife left the Lower 48 for an amazing adventure in Alaska. As an educator for three decades, responsible for educating Alaska’s children in remote communities from the Kodiak Archipelago to the shores of the Arctic Ocean, McDonald has been recognized nationally for prioritizing career technology and promoting place-based education. He spends his evenings writing and imagining a world where children and adults acquire the skills to build and sustain self-determined communities. With a doctorate in education and an imagination bigger than all the walls of a classroom could ever hold, McDonald is committed to writing books that broaden curiosities with the fantastic and ground the mind in the possible.

“Introducing the first book in a speculative fiction series called ‘The Atavist Effect: Rika’s Run,’ this sets the framework of an epic tale that starts with the actions of unlikely characters, whose pursuit of their faith, family, and freedom put them against distant, seemingly all-powerful forces. The story is told from the twenty-second century through the research of a maker’s apprentice trying to keep a seat in the qargi, the maker school. Like a complex puzzle, he pieces together old family stories to discover how a girl changed the events of the twenty-first century. On a stolen flying contraption and searching for her brother, Rika sowed the seeds of rebellion against technocratic globalists quietly seizing control and restricting people’s freedoms,” writes the author.

“The storyteller already knows that the world collapsed in the late twenty-first century; after all, it is a part of the curriculum in school. But the mystery is how it happened and how it all came back together. How do the choices of the previous generations impact the present? What is the right response when faced with difficult decisions against impossible odds?”