The Term Paper A thrilling novel by local author Steven Gareau. By Jennifer Coates
He had just come off one of those adrenaline-pumping sailboat races that leave you breathless, and headed straight to the pub to celebrate. The sailboat’s captain, Sam Garrison, was riding high ~ he was newly in love, had just sold a lucrative business, and was on the threshold of a world of wide-open possibilities. What Garrison didn’t know then was that the life he had planned was not the life that now lay before him ~ and it all began with the resurrection of an old, seemingly innocent term paper that he had written twenty years earlier while in college. Sam Garrison sounds like someone you might know. He is steady, smart, ambitious, as well as relatable. He loves politics, yet views them with a heavy dose of cynicism and criticism. One might say he is a scholar of “all things politics” ~ and not just partisan politics. He is an observer of history, more specifically, our nation’s complex governmental history. As a young college student, Garrison had written a term paper that he thought was a relatively innocuous expose` on the flaws of a two-party government system. What made that paper so memorable was how prophetic it turned out to be. It hypothesized that the two-party system that had long stood as the bastion of democracy, was susceptible to fraud, abuse, and rampant corruption. He proposed that a third party, such as the one represented by the late Ross Perot, was needed to watch over the better parts of the two-party system. This was essentially needed to “keep each party honest.” When we first meet Sam, we learn that twenty years after the composition of that term paper, four students at American University have presented a separate paper which outlines a few theories of their own on the government’s structure. The difference between Garrison’s analysis and the radical ideas of these students is that they have conceived of an idea that will destroy America and its foundational standard bearer, the Constitution, from within. For those who haven’t figured it out yet, Sam Garrison is a fictional character ~ the conceptualization of Johnston resident and political aficionado, Steven Gareau. In a style that might resemble author Tom Clancy, Gareau has written a fast-paced 68 Shop In RI
novel of intrigue, suspense, and pulsating twists and turns that take you from the classrooms of a prestigious college to the halls of the very center of our republic, our nation’s Capitol. There are numerous characters who help Garrison with this tale of mystery and suspense, all of whom are based on real-life characters and real-life friends of Gareau. There is Garrison’s flame, Bethany Johnson (aka “BJ”), and his old high school friend and cohort, Stan Grisson. There are leery and cautious professors, and secretive men driving government-issued vehicles and lurking in the shadows, tracing Sam’s footsteps across the country. There are the four young students, one of whom meets a tragic and suspicious death. And of course, the main character is the “term paper” itself, the focus of government officials and the inspiration for the four student authors and instigators. The plot of this captivating story begins on those rocky waters off the Massachusetts coastline and winds back and forth across the country, from Savannah (home of Garrison’s and Gareau’s old naval base) to Palm Springs (where long unprotected roads stretch far into the horizon) to Alexandria and Washington DC. The reader is drawn into scenarios between Garrison and those who wish to protect him, between those who wish him harm, and those who love him. One follows along as the connection between Garrison and
