Samantha's Talent

Samantha Douglas--Sammie to her friends--is a pretty, shy young girl living in a remote area of Alaska with her parents. She is exceptionally intelligent but normal otherwise except for one very unique and exceptional talent: she has been able to talk to animals and have them understand her as far back as she can remember. She can also listen to any animal and understand its language, but of course the higher mammals have much more to say. There is only one problem: no one believes her, not even her parents. Sammie's talent gets her into more and more trouble as she grows older. Neighboring families fear their own children will attempt to emulate Samantha's ability to make friends with animals and get hurt by them--or worse. The Douglas family is ostracized and feared even after Samantha saves some younger classmates from a rabid wolverine. The family is finally forced to move to the lower forty eight.In a small city in Texas, Samantha calls attention to herself by leading a runaway tiger with a badly infected tooth back to the zoo for treatment. An overbearing Child Protective Services supervisor attempts to take Samantha away from her parents because they "expose her to dangerous animals". When they come for her she runs away--to the zoo. There she hides in plain sight with three tigers and Shufus, her German Shepherd Dog and her constant companion. Media coverage now reaches a frenzy, enough to draw the attention of a secretive government agency that wants to protect her and another, rogue band of agents from Homeland Security who want to use her for their own purposes. Her talent also attracts Jihadists, who see all kinds of possibilities in using her talent for their own ends. The friendly, but extremely secretive government agency needs her to help solve a special project that will come to fruition in just a few years, when Sammie is older.After surviving several attacks and kidnapping attempts with the help of her animal friends, the government agency that has been clandestinely trying to protect the family takes the teen age Samantha and her family into friendly custody. There she discovers why they have been interested in her talent.The culmination of the agency project comes after many studies of Samantha's talent, studies that show that she may be able to solve their quandary but to do so she needs some help from her animal friends and from her secret and seemingly hopeless love, a polymath scientist named Juan Carrera. The climax of all the years of Samantha's developing talent occurs sooner than anyone expected. Even if Samantha and Juan succeed, it will only open the door to a much more complex situation, one that has to be solved by persons far above their pay grade--but Sammie and Juan hold all the cards. An exciting and unusual Adult or Young Adult novel anyone can enjoy.


Genre: Science Fiction