The Kamas Trilogy Series by Preston Fleming

Inspired by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s account of a Soviet labor camp revolt in Gulag Archipelago, Volume III, the story follows political prisoners and security officials at a corrective labor camp in Kamas, Utah, where inmates seize control during the summer of 2024.Kamas, Utah. 2024... moreInspired by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s account of a Soviet labor camp revolt in Gulag Archipelago, Volume III, the story follows political prisoners and security officials at a corrective labor camp in Kamas, Utah, where inmates seize control during the summer of 2024.Kamas, Utah. 2024. In the totalitarian dystopia that America has become after the Unionist Party’s rise to power, the American West contains vast Restricted Zones dotted with ghost towns, scattered military garrisons and corrective labor camps where the regime disposes of its real and suspected enemies. Kamas is one such camp.On a frigid March night, a former businessman from Pittsburgh, Paul Wagner, arrives at a labor camp in Utah’s Kamas Valley, a dozen miles east of the deserted resort town of Park City, which prisoners are dismantling as part of a massive recycling project.When Wagner arrives, he is unaware that his eleven-year-old daughter, Claire, has set off to Utah to find him after becoming separated from her mother at the Philadelphia Airport. By an odd quirk of fate, Claire has traveled on the same train that carried her father into internal exile.Only after Wagner has renounced all hope of survival, cast his lot with anti-regime hard-liners and joined them in an unprecedented and suicidal revolt does he discover that Claire has become a servant in the home of the camp’s Deputy Warden. Wagner is torn between his devotion to family and loyalty to his fellow rebels until, on the eve of an armored assault intended to crush the revolt, he faces an agonizing choice between a hero’s death and a coward’s freedom.In Forty Days at Kamas, author Preston Fleming offers a stirring portrait of a man determined to survive under the bleakest of conditions and against formidable odds. Fleming’s gift for evocative prose brings the characters and events to life in a way that arouses emotional tension while also engaging the reader’s intellect with fundamental questions about the future of American society. less

The second book in the Kamas Trilogy begins five years after the Kamas revolt. A Kamas survivor who returns to Boston is ordered by the prisoners’ covert Star Committee to kill the commandant who crushed the revolt.Boston. 2029. Five years after the Kamas revolt.Frank Werner, a Boston businessman arrested for dissident political activity, has survived a brutal government assault on a mutinous corrective labor camp in Kamas, Utah, and a year at hard labor in a remote Yukon tungsten mine... moreThe second book in the Kamas Trilogy begins five years after the Kamas revolt. A Kamas survivor who returns to Boston is ordered by the prisoners’ covert Star Committee to kill the commandant who crushed the revolt.Boston. 2029. Five years after the Kamas revolt.Frank Werner, a Boston businessman arrested for dissident political activity, has survived a brutal government assault on a mutinous corrective labor camp in Kamas, Utah, and a year at hard labor in a remote Yukon tungsten mine. He gains amnesty during a brief political thaw and returns to Boston illegally in search of his only surviving daughter, Marie.No sooner does Werner gain a foothold in Boston as a bootlegger-bartender and move in with a lovely widowed pediatrician than his new life begins to unravel. A former Kamas rebel leader who twice saved his life assigns him a mission by authority of the prisoners’ covert Star Committee. The objective: to execute the warden who quelled the Kamas revolt five years before.Werner, now nearly sixty, accepts the assignment reluctantly and recruits four trusted friends for his team. Each has a dark past and a different reason for joining the conspiracy. But the mission goes awry twice. After the second failed attempt on the former warden, who has been reassigned to Boston, each of the other team members is killed or leaves the field. Left alone, Werner resolves to complete the operation on his own. Before he can follow through, however, his missing daughter suddenly reappears. Now, by attacking, he risks any chance he might have of rejoining her.Star Chamber Brotherhood offers unforgettable characters, rapidly mounting suspense and a richly imagined vision of an America gone terribly wrong. With his distinctive understated prose, Preston Fleming manages to evoke strong emotions and force wrenching choices in a new book that more than fulfills the promise of his debut novel, Forty Days at Kamas. less

“Pure energy in print form, whether the characters are being pursued or simply talking; Fleming has proven himself a craftsman.” KIRKUS REVIEWS“As with all of Preston Fleming's previous books, EXILE HUNTER weaves together the harsh realities of personal betrayal, physical torment, emotional pain, and a spiritual quest with astute intelligence.” BOOKPLEASURES... more“Pure energy in print form, whether the characters are being pursued or simply talking; Fleming has proven himself a craftsman.” KIRKUS REVIEWS“As with all of Preston Fleming's previous books, EXILE HUNTER weaves together the harsh realities of personal betrayal, physical torment, emotional pain, and a spiritual quest with astute intelligence.” BOOKPLEASURES.COMEXILE HUNTER, the third book in the Kamas Trilogy, begins in 2023, one year before the Kamas revolt, in a dystopian America ruled by a tyrannical President-for-Life who turns America’s military and intelligence assets against his domestic enemies. The protagonist, an undercover officer specializing in targeting exiled political opponents, becomes the scapegoat for a failed operation and is sent to die in a corrective labor camp near the Arctic Circle. But, defying all odds, he survives, escapes and devotes his remaining energies to finding and aiding a woman whose family he has ruined.READERS' FAVORITE BOOK AWARDS WINNER 2014 (FICTION-DYSTOPIA)SYNOPSIS: Beirut, 2023: When undercover intelligence officer Warren Linder agrees to lure an exiled opponent of the President-for-Life back to impoverished, low-tech, post-Civil War II America, Linder is unaware that the target is his childhood sweetheart’s father. On learning this, he ignores his better instincts and plunges ahead. But a surprise encounter with the woman who rejected him years before triggers a change in Linder that derails the operation. His bosses, suspecting treachery, capture Linder along with the target and his daughter and spirit them back to the U.S. aboard a secret rendition flight. Linder’s ensuing journey takes him from Beirut to a Virginia interrogation center and on to an Arctic labor camp; then, after a nearly impossible winter escape, on a 2000-mile trek to the Utah Security Zone, where his onetime love was last held. Though he finds her, their respective ordeals have changed them. The story reaches a climax in the couple’s home town of Cleveland, where Linder aims to recover his former target’s last cache of rebel funds and use it to take his loved ones beyond the regime’s reach. EXILE HUNTER is a tragic yet life-affirming saga of a man who risks everything to set right past wrongs, regain lost love and resist the tyranny he once served.In EXILE HUNTER, author Preston Fleming offers his most richly imagined vision yet of the future American dystopia introduced in FORTY DAYS AT KAMAS, while endowing the story’s characters with complexity and a remarkable capacity for growth. Warren Linder's epic journey crackles with excitement at every step and leads to a deeply satisfying conclusion. Devoted Fleming readers will likely consider EXILE HUNTER the author's best work by far. less