The Satartia Incident - Paperback

Something is wrong with the air in Satartia. Nestled deep in the Mississippi Delta, the tiny, isolated village of Satartia is a place locked in permanent suspension. It is a town of fewer than sixty residents, bound by the sluggish brown crawl of the Yazoo River and surrounded by miles of pitch-black cornfields. Everyone knows everyone here. Life moves to the rhythm of routine-until the clock strikes 10:00 PM on a muggy Friday night. In a blink, a sudden flash stains the Delta clouds, and the entire village plunges into a crippling, absolute darkness.

Inside the heavily air-conditioned sanctuary of The Hot Plate Diner, a handful of locals, a stranded trucker, and an out-of-town scientist are trapped together as the local grid fails. While some suspect a repeat of the region's infamous pipeline disasters, a heavy, unnatural river fog rolls off the water and swallows Plum Street. They quickly realize this is no ordinary blackout. The electronic appliances are sparking. Watches are running backward. And outside the diner's thick glass windows, the silent, familiar streets of their hometown have suddenly become a hostile, unrecognizable void.

As an eerie, low-frequency throb vibrates through the very jawbones of the survivors, local history, ancient folklore, and a suffocating reality begin to collide. Pinned between the deep river and the steep loess bluffs, the choices are narrowing. To survive the night, the trapped patrons must look past their own paranoia before the fragile boundary separating them from the dark completely dissolves.