Description

"Stop, hey, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down." Nine Degrees North serves up a coming-of-age free-fall into the transplanted lives of six high-school teenagers in the year 1969. The story unfolds on Kwajalein Island, a military missile test facility in the Pacific ocean, and is set against the music of the era. As fifteen-year-old Carrie Conroy and her friends navigate their new, isolated surroundings, they deal with military predators, first loves, and are on a fast-track to growing up in a world at war. But when questions arise about the history behind their new home and what goes on at this secret, military base, they are only met with radio silence. As their thirst for knowledge escalates, they befriend their high school History teacher who risks everything and secretly takes them to a neighboring island revealing the incredible and shocking horrors behind the fallout of the nuclear testing that befell the Marshallese people who still live there. Soon thereafter, their close friend's brother is killed in the Viet Nam war which fuels their need to do something. In an effort to bring their cause to light, and knowing that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those, who in a crisis, do nothing, they orchestrate a dangerous and perilous protest as they breach the military test facility and scale a nuclear rocket which leads to deadly circumstances. Sometimes making a difference means taking a risk and it all explodes on the page at nine degrees north of the equator.