Winner of 2009 Green Book Festival's SCIENCE FICTION GENRE AWARD, which honors books that contribute to greater understanding, respect and positive action on the changing worldwide environment. Click on http://www.greenbookfestival.com/.
Winner of Best EPIC ADVENTURE and Best SCIENCE FICTION EPIC ADVENTURE of 2008, as awarded by BooksandAuthors.net. Click on http://www.books-and-authors.net/BooksoftheYear2008.html and scroll down to view awards.
Finalist in 2009 National Indie Book Excellence Awards for ACTION-ADVENTURE. Click on http://www.indieexcellence.com/indie-results-2009.php#1 and scroll down to view award.
A novel of epic adventure, treacherous risk, and resolute hope.
WITHIN A POVERTY-STRICKEN LAND WHERE
DEATH AND MISERY RUN UNCHECKED…
He has come to fulfill a solemn promise made to a comrade-in-arms killed in the mountains of Tora Bora. He is the consummate warrior, bold and courageous, daring to the point of recklessness. But fate intercedes, and Jake Javolyn finds himself the protector of the most incredible life forms the Earth has ever produced…
IN A HIDDEN COVE TEEMING WITH LIFE,
FANTASTIC RICHES ABOUND BENEATH
CALM WATERS…
A beautiful girl and her Haitian mentor are not prepared for the violence and greed about to overtake them.
ON A TINY ISLAND IN THE MIDDLE OF THE
CARIBBEAN, JAKE AND THE GIRL FIND
THEMSELVES ON A PERILOUS MISSION…
They must confront overwhelming odds where insidious forces are at work to unleash a monstrous plot aimed at changing the world forever.
Michael J. Ganas is a licensed professional engineer and the director of a leading marine engineering firm within the U.S. Following a tour of duty in Vietnam where he served as a helicopter crew chief with the 17th Air Cavalry, he earned a degree in civil engineering from Cornell University. Shortly thereafter, his love of the sea prompted him to pursue a career as a deep sea commercial diver, heading a wide array of marine construction projects. This eventually led him into his current occupation, which takes on the challenges of civil engineering in underwater environments. This is his first novel.
To learn more, click on http://www.pwmag.com/industry-news.asp?sectionID=774&articleID=805663 to access an article about the author and novel entitled, "Engineering a Fantasy," as it appeared in the November 2008 issue of Public Works Magazine.
To view a newspaper story about the author winning his first book award, click on http://www.strausnews.com/articles/2009/02/19/advertiser_news/news/26.txt.
To view another newspaper story about the author winning his second book award, click on http://strausnews.com/articles/2009/04/29/new_jersey/milestones/5.txt.
Also, click on http://www.strausnews.com/articles/2009/04/02/advertiser_news/news/15.txt for information on a previous book signing event by the author.
To read about what inspired the author to write The Girl Who Rode Dolphins, click on http://www.authorhouse.com/WhyAuthorHouse/CaseStudies/Ganas.aspx.
Click on Reuters top news story entitled, Deep Sea Diver Plunges Into Fiction, which gave author and novel international coverage: http://www.reuters.com/article/peopleNews/idUSTRE5810ZG20090902?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=11570&sp=true
Visit www.thegirlwhorodedolphins.com to learn more about the author and novel.
A labyrinth of spellbinding twists, turns and thunderous action that will take the reader on a roller coaster ride of nail-biting suspense and high adventure (724 pages). Former Navy Seal Jake Javolyn, a part-time smuggler by necessity and dive boat operator by profession, has come to Haiti to fulfill a solemn promise made to a comrade-in-arms killed in the mountains of Tora Bora four years earlier. Hiring his boat out to Dr. Franklin Grahm, a renowned marine zoologist, Javolyn is instructed by the congenial Grahm to sail for Navassa Island where he believes a sloop owned by him went down in a storm almost 23 years earlier. Confiding to Javolyn that his pregnant wife, a marine biologist, had perished along with the vessel, Grahm is still unable to get over the loss of his spouse after all this time.
Setting a course directly for the island, Javolyn stumbles across a beautiful girl in the open sea. Encircled by a pod of six white bottlenose dolphins, the girl is seen riding a seventh much larger but similar creature. Following the pod, he eventually catches up to the girl to discover her name is Destiny. She is on a rescue mission aimed at saving other dolphins injured by the crew of a Colombian fishing trawler harvesting tuna. Having had an earlier run in with some of the ship’s crew back in Port-au-Prince, Javolyn knows them to be a mean, pernicious bunch that will have no scruples about harming the girl. Launching a custom-tailored waverunner armed with weaponry, Javolyn opposes the trawler crew in a blazing gun battle, ultimately saving Destiny and several dolphins from becoming entrapped in the trawler’s immense purse seine. He is soon introduced to Jacob, a grizzled Haitian fisherman who arrives in a rickety pinnace outfitted with makeshift floats to tow the wounded dolphins back to a hidden cove along the Haitian coast. Javolyn is left stunned by what happens next. A gunshot wound he suffered during his fight with the Colombians is completely healed in a matter of moments by Destiny’s touch. His amazement escalates further when he notices the albino dolphins are nothing like any sea mammal he has ever before seen. They possess hands, super-intelligence, and are able to speak in human languages.
Through Jacob, Javolyn learns Destiny and the dolphins have come into being to save mankind from itself. From then on, he is plunged into a world of mysticism, voodoo and confrontation with iniquitous forces bent on vengeance and the capture of nature’s most recent miracles. Evil has asserted itself in the form of an unlikely alliance, one which Javolyn finds himself pitted against. A sadistic colonel seeks to take control of Haiti by forging a unique partnership with the vicious Cardoza drug ring and Islamic terrorists. And with the Islamists seeking to attack the U.S. from Caribbean waters, the colonel’s ambitions might just succeed, particularly since he is able to provide the terrorists with the location of a sunken hydrogen bomb lost at sea many years earlier. Destiny sees beyond the brewing danger, knowing there is still hope, not only for the Haitian people but for the entire human race. It is at Navassa Island where the forces of good and evil eventually clash in a fierce showdown, and it is there that mankind’s future is ultimately determined.