Brushfire, A Thriller by Matthew Wojtecki (Digital)

Do you ever feel like something is not quite right with the world?

This is the story of Henry Tucker, a shopkeeper at the I-77 Antique Mall, a large antique warehouse off the Ohio interstate highway. His life is forever changed when he meets a rebellious freedom-lover, Winston Smith, at a poker game. Winston is a fellow antiques dealer by day, and by night runs underground rave parties out of a nearby abandoned industrial building complex. Henry’s new friend invites him to a party and his life goes from “normal 9-5 shop clerk” to “fugitive” as he witnesses Winston get busted by the law. After police kidnap Winston, he later discovers an old book in a pile of Winston’s antiques and it changes his life forever.

Winston’s incarceration kicks off a nationwide manhunt and Henry fears that he will soon be killed or captured. He finally works up the courage to ask a local waitress “Maxine” to have dinner with him and, Max, after some convincing, leaves her job and comes on the run with him.

BRUSHFIRE is packed full of twists and turns as Henry continues his journey through the chaos and a web of government secrets. He later meets up with a decentralized freedom cell and gets a taste of what true liberty really feels like. The side-stories give a powerful lesson on the cruelties of state-sanctioned capital punishment, and emphasize just how overly powerful and convoluted the legal system really has become.

With Henry’s world being turned upside down and him being exposed to the truth, the reader can’t help but make comparisons to one’s own country; the ever growing prison population, the moral double standard, increasing police militarization, censorship, state secrets, the out of control surveillance state, and the slow chiseling away of basic human rights and liberties.

Two freedom cells come together to help Henry evade Tall Man and Barnaby, the federal agents tasked with tracking them down. Henry and his new liberty-minded friends must use every tool at their disposal to avoid detection, continue the mission, and bring the truth to others open to it, including the use of: crypto-currencies, hacking techniques, secure encrypted messaging, and strong security culture. The group’s functionality and its methods provide just one of many examples of how liberty in our lifetime is possible, but only with direct action.