Book excerpt: This spellbinding tale, filled with engaging characters, heroes and villains alike, confronts the land-use crisis in America. With chilling affect, this story foreshadows the look and feel of the mid-21st-century given the continued loss of land to commercial and residential development. In Murrin's fictional America, the federal government enacts radical legislation in an attempt to control land-use practices, resulting in a political landscape that is unrecognizable. Local power brokers quickly learn to manipulate the new system, outlawing dissension groups while continuing to devour open space at an alarming rate. However, despite being driven underground, the tiny Land Preservation Society (LPS) remains determined to save as many acres as they can. As Tom Sanders struggles to keep the LPS together, he pins his last hope on holding the line at Meador Farms, rumored to be an ancient Native American burial ground, making it a possible deterrence to development. Tom is in for the race of his life, as he desperately tries to save his beloved property.