Days of Future Found

Diane Donovan, Author Editor, California Bookwatch

"Ella lives a good life in the year 2039. She has been genetically enhanced to slow her aging process, and lives in a climate-controlled colony safe from the ravages of the outside world. However, her safety is threatened as she comes to realize that her genetically enhanced peers have been disappearing.

"Approached by the Longevity Institute to participate as a subject in their research, Ella must decide whether her journey should be towards the destiny of her fellow vanished peers or away from everything she's known that has made for a comfortable, predictable life in a chaotic world.

"Days of Future Found examines life purpose, comfort zones, risk-taking, and the moral and ethical promises of longevity and privilege alike as it follows Ella's physical and mental journey.

"More so than most dystopian stories, it incorporates a feeling of higher purpose as Ella struggles not only with her own potentially unlimited lifespan, but its impact on everything around her.

"M.K. Wark crafts a tale that is exemplary in its descriptions of Ella's world and her thought processes as she makes some very different decisions about her future. Wark takes the time to explore Ella's relationship with neighbors and others, considers the influence of historical precedent on the future, and injects into her novel a sense of purpose and place that bring to life not only Ella's psyche and situation, but the consequences of her decisions.

"Days of Future Found is also a probe of elder rights, ethical and moral issues, and Riley and Ella's changing relationship when Ella loses some of her fear and becomes proactive about her future and her growing power to change the inevitable.

"Above all, it's a thought-provoking journey not just through a changed future, but through the circumstances which created it and the individual choices which can alter it. As Ella learns to identify what is important at the end of life, audiences become engaged with the life and conundrums of a protagonist who is simultaneously both old and young. Readers will find her adventure and struggles compelling on more than one level.

"Days of Future Found is a top recommendation for fans of dystopian sci-fi, who will find its creation and observations of a society in which elders play a special, different role to be thoroughly engrossing."

M.K. Wark has been blogging and teaching about the realities of aging in America for the last few years. This debut novel is a byproduct of her trying to make sense of it all. Always a futurist speculating on what comes next, she has launched SilverReads, an indie imprint for future-forward fiction.