High Ground

A week ago, Margaret’s father died in a car crash near his coastal summer home. She has come to retrieve his dog and belongings and stepped into a war for this strange little town’s soul. In a once grand mansion next door she finds Esther Brandt, a sweet, frail old woman living alone in terror in the huge, darkened house. Esther tells her she is an EMF hypersensitive who suffers pain in the presence of electromagnetic fields from radio, TV, or even electric wires. She tells Margaret that she is under nightly attack by searing radiation of an unknown source. Unsure if Esther is insane, confused or actually being tormented, Margaret turns to the townspeople for help but finds none. They tell her Esther’s hated robber-baron father had ground the people of this town to dust in his long-closed mills. However, one of them confides, "Esther may be crazed, but she is not crazy.” Margaret learns that a 21st century robber-baron has begun night test flights of a powerful new weapon from a reactivated World War II airfield nearby, directly over the Brandt estate, unaware that anyone still lives in the dark, decrepit mansion below. Like a Michael Crichton tale set in Stephen King's fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine, HIGH GROUND is a collision between the 20th and 21st centuries and the struggle between long-suffering hatred and the powerful human need to forgive.