Windmill Bluff - Paperback

"Windmills, ghosts, psychiatric ward, uranium, domestic terrorism-rollicking and deep. Only Michael Hartnett." -Joe Edd Morris, author of The Lost Page

The old psychiatric tower has been blown to bits, and FBI agents quickly determine that the suspect with the most plausible answers is a brilliant liar: Robbie DeFonte, a young YouTube star whose family chronicles are steeped in the darker history of the sprawling mental facility. A massive wind farm erected around the ruined psychiatric center buildings becomes central to a lurid tale that transports back a century earlier to unearth a legacy of hidden weapons and lost lives.

As Robbie offers his testimony to Agent Chen, he reveals tunnels below the long-abandoned facility, a dead body found down there in a military uniform, and the toxic remnants of large-scale uranium shipments. Through the lives of his grandfather, the Colonel who ran both the psychiatric center and the elaborate munitions depot, and his grandmother, who uncovered many secrets as a young bride, Robbie spins a yarn that takes the reader back to FDR's clandestine programs and pushes ahead to a wind farm fraught with danger and hope.

Windmill Bluff is a masterful tale that mines America's turbulent past to fuel its blustery future.