A private American consortium of corporate owners aims to pipe and ship water from northern Quebec to the US. Congressmen, state governors and a federal administration hostile to Canada ride shotgun for them, aided by a brilliant, existentially torn Quebec deputy minister and a cutthroat minister of finance. They’re resisted by a whistle-blowing executive, the director of a major US environmental organization, a group of Quebec ecologists, a feisty British journalist, three rogue policemen, a reluctant eco-terrorist and a maverick Vermont governor hated by the consortium and the White House.

In an era during which water scarcity…“one of the major problems of the twenty-first century,” according to the UN…becomes a very real proposition for much of the world, Water, Inc. is an exquisitely timely political thriller. With action sprawling across urban and rural America, into the cities and beautiful wilderness of Quebec, and as far as Mexico, Lisbon, London and Brussels, it is a story of greed, heroism, clashing loyalties, love, hate and mortal risk.

“Canadian writer Burstyn dramatizes the stakes involved in the battle for commercial control of ‘big water’ in a smart, sexy, witty, and hard-hitting eco-thriller.” — Booklist

” A spectacular eco-thriller about corrupt officials and military-industrial-complex billionaires conspiring to pipe water down from Canada, nicely leavened by a love story between nature geeks fighting the nefarious plan.” — Orion

“A cracking tale … rolling with intrigue and suspense.” — Kirkus

Varda Burstyn’s acclaimed work has appeared in print, radio, film and broadcast media. Water, Inc. is the first of a trilogy on politics and the environmental crisis.
Publication
April 2005

320 pages

Cloth
1 85984 596 7
£12.99 / US$25 / CAN$37