Book Summary: The Solution for the Eastern Seaboard by Alexander Kessler
The solution for the Eastern Seaboard” derives its title from the 1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater rhetorically asking in front of a wooden relief of the United States whether the Eastern Seaboard could not simply be sawed off and drifted into the sea.
Goldwater was alluding to the fact that his party’s election success had often been hampered by the votes in the states of the Eastern Seaboard. That scenario could become grim reality, as geologists indicate that a volcanic eruption of the Cumbre Vieja on the Canary island of Las Palmas may lead to the crater and a large part of the island slipping into the Atlantic Ocean.
The giant landslide would trigger a massive earthquake at the seabed of the eastern Atlantic, which could initiate a tsunami devastating the east coast of North America with a wave height in excess of 20 meters.
Book Review: The Solution for the Eastern Seaboard by Alexander Kessler
The Solution for the Eastern Seaboard is a meticulously plotted and unsettlingly plausible thriller that takes the reader on a white-knuckle ride towards one of the most catastrophic disasters ever depicted in fiction. Author Alexander Kessler wields his premise of a man-made mega-tsunami striking the East Coast of the United States like a precision weapon, laying out an intricate web of scheming characters and interlocking events that build relentlessly towards an apocalyptic climax.
At its core, this is a novel deeply rooted in the lingering sociopolitical rifts and resentments left in the wake of the Cold War. Kessler mines this fertile ground to chilling effect by putting us inside the minds of the perpetrators – former East German military officers who have been hollowed out by the crushing loss of their world after reunification. Chief among them is the embittered Jürgen Kleuthen, a one-time lieutenant general who watched helplessly as the regime he served crumbled and his life’s purpose was rendered obsolete.
What makes Kleuthen’s brooding menace so disquieting is how Kessler renders him not as a cackling super-villain, but as a painfully human figure driven to vengeance by acutely personal tragedies. The sexual exploitation and murder of his beloved niece Sybil at the hands of morally corrupt West Berlin socialites becomes the final, unforgivable insult that hardens his resolve to strike back at Western decadence on a cataclysmic scale. Kessler depicts Kleuthen’s transition from grieving uncle to terrorist mastermind with an unsettling progression of emotional realism.
Balancing out Kleuthen are a rich array of characters both aligned with and against his devastating plot. His co-conspirator Maik Mittelberg brings technical expertise as they work to repurpose decommissioned U.S. nuclear mines for use in triggering a massive tsunami. The charismatic Russian defector Sergej inadvertently aids their scheme while trying to secretly undermine it. In the American government, the intelligence operative Hogan Brokman and conniving senior official “Number Two” conduct a cat-and-mouse game of uncovering and obfuscating the truth about the threat.
Kessler’s robust cast all get rich arcs and shading, imbuing even relatively minor players with vividly realized idiosyncrasies and moral complexities. We see self-interest, bureaucratic infighting, political point-scoring, and personal foibles constantly throwing up roadblocks and red herrings that obscure the slow revelation of the tsunami plot. Few writers have such a curiously intimate grasp of how institutions, with all their overlapping self-preservations and petty turf wars, can blind themselves to looming catastrophe.
Nowhere is this depiction more scathing than in the characterization of “Number One,” the blustering U.S. president who comically fails to recognize the danger even as the clock ticks down inexorably. A former reality TV host who tries to run the government like the star of his own show, Number One is both a razor-sharp satire of a certain kind of populist demagogue and a chilling look at the security risks of having someone so glaringly unfit in a position of supreme power.
For all its rich character work, however, The Solution for the Eastern Seaboard still qualifies as a fast-paced thriller with no shortage of harrowing action set pieces. From covert underwater missions to shadowy surveillance operations to gunfights and explosions, Kessler ratchets up the tension with a master’s sleight of hand. His clinically precise descriptions of the weapons and tactics used by both sides make even the most outlandish plot turns feel grounded and visceral.
Arguably the book’s most nerve-shredding sequence comes when Kleuthen and Mittelberg painstakingly transport the nuclear mines deep underground within hollowed-out wells beneath an abandoned monastery on La Palma. Racing against time as NATO troops close in, the two men must improvise daring contingencies and outwit the encroaching forces in gripping cliffhanger fashion. Kessler’s keen sense of pacing and eye for intricate logistical details in these scenes is matched only by his knack for rubbing the reader’s nose in the terrifying implications of what will happen if the bombs go off as planned.
When the tsunami itself hits about two-thirds of the way through the book, Kessler doesn’t hold anything back in portraying the sheer, unrelenting scale of the devastation. The monster wave swallowing up the Eastern Seaboard is depicted in gut-wrenching, moment-to-moment detail, with major metropolises like New York City and Washington D.C. disappearing beneath a churning vortex of debris and millions of lives lost. Even those characters who anticipate the disaster are powerless to stop the mighty forces Kleuthen has unleashed.
The imagery Kessler employs is as visceral as it is frighteningly credible, bringing to mind the most harrowingly realistic disaster footage but somehow even more unsettling. You can almost feel the stinging spray of saltwater on your face as skyscrapers topple and hapless civilians are engulfed by the pitiless deluge. It’s a masterclass in scenario building that makes the earlier setup and political maneuvering feel that much more consequential in retrospect.
Yet even after this tidal wave of onscreen carnage, Kessler isn’t content to leave the reader hanging. In the book’s final third, he charts the protracted aftermath and impacts of the catastrophe in equally granular detail. We see the breakdown of the U.S. government and infrastructure, the upending of global geopolitics, the struggles of the scattered survivors, and the bitter racial, and socioeconomic reckonings that emerge in the wake of such existential upheaval.
No less compelling are Kessler’s glimpses of the fates that befall the individual characters we’ve grown attached to over the preceding pages. Some meet gruesome demises, others are consigned to haunting exiles, and still others find flickers of grim determination to rebuild from the ashes. The author’s refusal to go for cheap shockers or tidy resolutions here lends the narrative’s final movements a powerfully elegiac quality that lingers long after the final page.
For all its epic scale and troubling scenarios, there are moments in The Solution for the Eastern Seaboard when Kessler’s penetrating dark humor and gift for satire shine through. One can’t help but burst out laughing at his depictions of hapless TV reporters trying to keep viewers enthralled even as civilization literally crumbles around them, or the bureaucratic blowhards more obsessed with jurisdiction than doing their jobs.
He reserves his sharpest barbs, however, for the Eastern European conspirators themselves. Their grandiose scheming, delusional revolutionary self-pity, and slavish devotion to picayune protocols are gradually revealed to be not just misguided but outright pathetic in their impotence. Even as the tsunami is ravaging their intended target, we see them endlessly parsing the minutiae of code names, protocol, and old grudges like kids on a playground—a final sick punchline emphasizing just how divorced their personal demons were from the real-world stakes.
At the end of the day, the overriding strength of The Solution for the Eastern Seaboard lies in just how immersively Kessler has realized his fictional world. For all its nightmare fueling scenarios and twisted plotting, this remains a novel firmly grounded in the socioeconomic, political, geological, and military details of our actual current reality. The author has clearly done an exhaustive amount of research on everything from weapons systems to climate patterns to obscure corners of the Cold War’s legacy.
He then manages to integrate all of these finely rendered factual underpinnings into a propulsive, compulsively readable narrative that moves like a bull in a China shop. No matter how improbable a particular story beat may seem, Kessler always has the receipts to back it up with a dizzying array of statistics, data points, and real-world precedents. It’s a masterclass in fusing genres, blending the pleasures of a ripped-from-the-headlines torn straight from CNN with the fuel-injected pacing of a Hollywood blockbuster.
That ability to shift gears from cerebral and plausible to shamelessly pulpy is ultimately what makes The Solution for the Eastern Seaboard such a wickedly entertaining novel. One moment you’re being asked to ponder the geopolitical fractures of a Post-Cold War Europe, and the next you’re watching bullets fly and entire cities being swallowed by tsunamis. Few writers can walk that tightrope with such assuredness while keeping the whole enterprise feeling cohesive.
By the end, what lingers most is not just the indelible imagery of wanton destruction but the sinking feeling that the divides underpinning Kessler’s narrative are all too recognizable in our real world. As long as festering historical grievances, cycles of trauma, and petty self-interest conspire to blind mankind to existential dangers, cataclysms may always remain just around the corner – whether man-made or naturally occurring. We ignore those storm clouds at our own peril.
It’s a chilling sentiment, rendered all the more unsettling by the computer precision with which Kessler dramatizes it here. The Solution for the Eastern Seaboard isn’t just a terrific work of suspense fiction but a clarion warning shot about the all-too-human frailties that could lead to the unthinkable. That it remains a massively entertaining read from beginning to end is a testament to its author’s consummate skill as a storyteller. Consider this a highly recommended thrill ride through the darker corridors of political intrigue and natural apocalypse.
