A charming natural history (inclined to botany) of the Rincon Mountains of SE Arizona. But the location is not carefully specified.

In the 1960s the Air Force buried 1,000 ICBMs in pastures across the Great Plains to keep U.S. nuclear strategy out of view. As rural civilians of all political stripes found themselves living in the Soviet crosshairs, a proud Plains individualism gave way to an economic dependence on the military-industrial complex that still persists today.

The story of ‘The Mountains Within’ is prototypical of the people who grew into first-ever consciousness of their own identities from the obscurity of innumerable socio-cultural microcosms that had existed at the subterranean level for centuries and millennia over the length and breadth of India before the Independence. The story moves from present to past to future with the main protagonist’s grand-daughter setting out to reconstruct the life story of her grand-father she admires. The story is contemporary and relevant to a whole lot of Indians who finished their journeys of existence at the beginning of the new millennium. As they sit back, vacuous and dazed after the ‘retirement’, they cannot help ruminating over the past vis-à-vis their own lives. No matter how objective their self-appraisal, they cannot escape being dubbed a generation of ineffectual crusaders who fell from grace by succumbing to hypocrisies both personal and collective. They cannot exonerate themselves from the stigma of making a mess of a newly liberated country through moral turpitude and lack of individual will. They cannot face up to the younger generation of today and convince them they had no role to play in the fabrication of myths such ‘Mera Bharat Mahaan’. There are no Nuremberg Trials for the crimes we commit within our minds and souls. However, if history is continuity between the past and the present, then ‘The Mountains Within’ does leave some doors open for Nuremberg Trials of the mind and the souls for these Indians.

Simpson offers a biography of her mother, one of the first female journalists in New Mexico who was known for her informative, influential, and inspiring writing.

Michael's journey continues. He soon realises that a destiny has been placed upon him to save the Nare by finding a cure for the disease that plagues them. There are choices to be made choices that only he can make. His journey will take him into darkness and danger, but help will be given when he least expects it. He meets danger too in his own world and he must rely on David and Netti to keep him safe. With the words of the prophecies ringing in his ears, he must find within himself the strength to defy the schemes of Khargahar and the brutal attacks by his servants; but Michael soon discovers that the Corruptor is not his only enemy. Dangers surround him in his own world and in Taleth, can Michael survive to fulfil his destiny in both worlds?