The Fourth Awakening - Rod Pennington

Penelope Drayton Spence made a choice years earlier, and picked marriage and family over a promising career as an investigative reporter. Now, divorced and with her children spread around the country, she is having second thoughts. A mysterious call from the Managing Editor of the Washington Post, offers her a second chance at big time journalism. He has a story so sensitive that the President of the United States personally asked the Post to leave it alone. With rumors of 30 top scientists missing and rich industrialist, Michael Walker, being held incommunicado in a prison typically used for terrorists, the story is too big to ignore. He quietly goes "off the grid" and turns to the only person he knows who is good enough to crack this story, his old college friend Penelope. The moment she picks up the phone her life is turned upside down and she soon finds herself traveling cross country with the most wanted man in America looking for information about the top secret "Hermes Project." On one level it is a straightforward suspense story with plenty of action, a healthy dose of humor and a pinch of sexual tension. On another it is a spiritual quest by a remarkable woman who meets an enlightened man the likes of which have never been seen in fiction before. Thanks to Michael Walker she gets a "do over" that allows her to go back and select the path not taken. Over the course of the story she gradually grows to understand Walker and the amazing spiritual powers he possesses. Penelope also becomes aware of the looming Fourth Awakening, and makes the chilling discovery that her reporting skills and ability to fight her personal demons may be the only thing that can save humanity.