Prairie Basin

Author's Note - 'Prairie Basin' Inspiration to write this action/survival story began when my wife Elly and I were on a touring holiday in Arizona and our guide proposed a once in a lifetime helicopter flight into the Grand Canyon for a picnic. With four other Brits and spectacular views of the Hoover Dam as we flew over it, we landed in the merciless heat and spellbinding terrain of the Canyon where our pilot, handing out prepacked parcels of fruit, sandwiches and warm cans of Coca Cola stated we could walk over to the nearby Colorado River but advised we 'keep an eye open for Rattlesnakes'. An unforgettable 'picnic' with all round relief when we returned to our hotel. Set in contemporary Arizona, the story captures the heat, the rugged terrain and the universal fear most people have of reptiles. The action scenes are drawn from a very near miss I had with a Scorpion while serving in an Airborne Unit on exercise in the UAE. Synopsis - When the two central characters, a father and his teenage son, go to 'Prairie Basin' a secluded lake at the peak of a mountain range, all is well until idyllic normality changes to an ordeal of stark, unrelenting terror… Barrie David From one of my own experiences of such unexpected yet terrifying change I drew on a classic example that happened when I was an Airborne Soldier billeted in a tented desert camp in the UAE and picked up a football sized rock to bang in a loose tent peg seeing to my horror a Scorpion crawl from beneath it, the unforgettable surge of stark fear I felt before rapidly giving the Scorpion a terminal headache using the same rock is pitilessly conveyed as father and son strive to survive during action scenes lasting for half the content of - 'Prairie Basin' Barrie David.