Shaken Allegiances

Book excerpt: Winner, 2nd Place, Fiction, 2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Winner, 1st Place, Regional Fiction, 2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Shaken Allegiances spans 48 hours in a world askew-almost absurd-just after a devastating earthquake has struck and isolated Montreal Island in the dead of an icy winter, one week before a referendum on Quebec's secession from Canada. No power, no communications, no access, and -40F, but no heroes to the rescue; no Schwarzenegger, no Stallone, no Charlton Heston. Provincial and federal politicians are busy waging an ideological war, while coordination of emergency response is in the hands of a lunatic; a structural engineer and a disc jockey form an odd couple in their pursuit of fame, while the frustrated media seek ways of leapfrogging the collapsed bridges to undertake some disaster tourism of their own. Their fortuitous encounters, and problems with quirky opportunists, converge to help make things worse. Kafka would feel at home. Shaken Allegiances jolts with a disturbing and witty projection of today's unbridled narcissistic society, a disaster in full bloom that has sprung from the seeds of individualism planted in the 1980s. Its colorful characters, quixotic, ambitious, rapacious, self-righteous, naive, conceited, moronic, lost, or otherwise flawed, provide a fresh, entertaining and cynical view of the inescapable human folly. About Michel Bruneau Michel Bruneau's blend of deadpan humor and keen eye for the nonsensical side of human nature underlie his original perspective on contemporary existence. His previous book of fiction, "Inhumanite - Onze nouvelles qui insultent l'intelligence" (in French) has received excellent reviews, particularly from Radio Canada. In the technical realm, he has been an earthquake engineer for over 20 years, doing his share to reduce the risks of infrastructure collapse. As a professor and researcher, he has extensively published and has received many awards for his work. Born in Quebec City, expatriated by the demands of work, he lives in Buffalo, enjoying its comparatively balmy winters. www.MichelBruneau.com Reviews "Seeing how the civil and political authorities behave, we are forced to conclude that the earthquake, after all, is a lesser evil. (...) They all work toward their own personal agenda. (...) Nobody is spared." "The characters sometimes resemble, to a fault, those we find in our own different parliaments." "A warning to your readers (...) to let them know from the outset that they will encounter things that may slightly unsettle them." -- Line Boily, Radio Canada "An earthquake cuts off Montreal Island from the world, and a whole circus of Canadian politics, media, and so much more erupt around it. A cynical and humorous look at the Quebec issue and modern Canada, "Shaken Allegiances" is uniquely Canadian and deserves a place in world fiction collections." -- Midwest Book Review Michel Bruneau has set the standard for combining excitement with factual content in the earthquake fiction genre. (...) This is not a novel in which to find role models. (...) Recommended to earthquake engineering experts as well as to the general public. -- Robert Reitherman, Executive Director, Consortium of Universities for Research in Earthquake Engineering, EERI Spectra