The Ghost Apple

At the turn of the eighteenth century, John Morehead Tripoli is marooned on the unspoiled Caribbean island of St. Renard. There, he lives for an idyllic year in a community of Carawak Indians. Three hundred years later, the Carawak are gone, St. Renard is carpeted with banana plantations and sugarcane fields, and Tripoli himself is remembered only through his grandson, founder of New Hampshire's Tripoli College, which maintains a branch campus on the island. The college, never prosperous, has been forced to enter into a coercive financial relationship with snack food giant Big Anna® Brands, the same corporation that controls most of the land on St. Renard. Big Anna® deposes the college president, uses students and faculty as test subjects for a "dietary and mood additive" called Malpraxalin ®, and hijacks the St. Renard campus for a "field studies" program.At the heart of this twisted satire are two souls in transition. Bill Brees is a grandfatherly dean,...