Coelacanth

<p>Defying putative extinction this 80000-word coelacanth conveys the resurrection of a student protest movement in a fictitious island (AuxIndes) off the coast of Africa.</p><p> Insular activists - joined by a pair of young Black Americans bearing their own legacies of bondage - work through business and professional channels to manage a vulnerable republic despite its isolation poverty and corruption. Prevailing insular dynamics force the principal characters to readjust their connections with one-another.</p><p>Surrounding them the ocean environment exemplifies the conduct of elusive communications to assure survival and to recombine resourcefully.</p><p> To The Indies turns on the sensibility of Cynthia Van Zan product of a once-enslaved Louisiana family and a father descended from West African royalty. A graphic artist with special gifts Van Zan enlivens the narrative through innate affinity with creatures of the ocean. Her colleague Denis Guyane born in New York of Haitian immigrants pursues a more terrestrial career as trouble-shooter for their AuxIndien employer the Fisherman and sometime President Roger Masson.</p><p> After a period of enforced isolation interrelated crises bring the principals together on both predictable and eccentric pathways. These include prospects for a professional reunion of Van Zan and Guyane in Manhattan as the Covid emergency is about to burst.</p>