The Divide: AWOL Thriller Book 3 - Suspenseful Military Fiction for Readers

The Divide is the third in Ray Anderson’s series of hiking thrillers. It tells the story of Karl Berman’s arduous and danger-packed 3,100-mile hike from the Mexican border to Canada, a jaunt that Anderson himself has made.Berman—known on the trail as ‘AWOL’—suffers from PTSD from his military service as well as from other troubling events in his past. He hikes to renew himself.Unfortunately, he walks into danger (and this being a thriller, we’d be disappointed had he not). Water shortages in the dry Southwest bring about clashes among land developers, the Ute Tribe, farmers and domestic terrorists. Berman finds himself in the middle of all this turmoil that eventually leads to an explosive conclusion.I felt drawn into the world of the long-distance hiker and was reminded of the modest hikes my wife and I have made in Arizona (thankfully without gunplay and explosions). I was fascinated to learn that, before some hikers settle in for the night, they lay their poles pointing in the direction that they are to start out the next day so that they don’t get confused and reverse course.I also learned some hiker’s vocabulary: A ‘thru-hiker’ is someone who begins at the start of the trail and follows it all the way to the end. A ‘zero day’ is a day of rest. Many serious hikers seem to have ‘trail names,’ which in places in this novel confused me (I’m easily confused). AWOL is a trail name, Butane another. The author must have one but hasn’t disclosed it. ‘Scribbler’? ‘WordDude’? “Maybe Anderson will tell us in his next novel.