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Primal Calling    by Barry Eisenberg Amazon.com order for
Primal Calling
by Barry Eisenberg
Order:  USA  Can
Vanguard, 2020 (2020)
Softcover, e-Book
* * *   Reviewed by Barbara Lingens

Barry Eisenberg is a careful writer, and this is helpful to us because in this story realities for the principal characters keep changing.

Jack, a teenager, accidentally finds his birth certificate, which undoes everything he knows about himself. His determination to unearth the reason for this deception is stymied by none other than national security personnel, who introduce him to a world of international intrigue that he can only guess about since he has no 'reason to know.'

For a teenager to find himself in the situations he does takes a stretch of the imagination, but Eisenberg capably leads us through the many aspects of life the novel covers, from the oil industry and engineering to how the FBI and CIA protect their people, to adoption laws and procedures - and it was all very interesting!

The other stretch of the imagination is how totally loving and rational the principal characters are. In the Acknowledgements, Eisenberg gives his family credit for inspiring his belief in 'the inherent goodness of the people in my story.' He is very fortunate. Oftentimes, in the very worlds he has placed his story we are confronted with a very different, more negative reality. And sometimes that reality makes for a more captivating story.

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