Not all allied world powers hold the best intentions, especially when precious resources are at stake. Just ask Maggie McCoy who has borne loss upon loss at the hands of Australian officials on her native Norfolk Island, a 14-square-mile territory in the vast Pacific Ocean. A former scientist-turned-tour guide, Maggie becomes the de facto leader of Norfolk’s fight for independence in A Nation Born, a female-driven literary thriller that reads like the love child of Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising and Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It , if midwifed by Andy Weir’s The Martian . The story follows Maggie and her enablers through an independence struggle that evolves from protests to total warfare with the most powerful militaries on earth. Through that lens, the story itself evolves from a vignette of a broken family healing itself into a comprehensive lesson in "being careful what you wish for."