ChinAlive

Charlie Evers is a tenth grade student at an international school in Shanghai, China. He has one last research assignment before summer break -- the damming of the Yangtze River and the Three Gorges Dam. He will never finish this assignment. Ignoring all the warnings about Chinese Internet censors, he navigates to sites that shred the government about the building of the dam. He uses words like democracy and corruption in his searches. He thinks that just because he's a teenage American student he won't get into trouble.

The Ministry of Public Security could care less who he is -- Charlie is now on their radar. His dad had warned him. Charlie knew the meaning of phrases like threatening the social order, endangering state security, spreading rumors, and subverting state authority.

The safe life he has always taken for granted is suddenly ripped away when his dad disappears. Three weeks later Charlie is kidnapped. Imprisoned in a corroded cabin well below the waterline, a seven-day trip up the Yangtze takes him deep into China's turbulent past, and into a mind numbing conspiracy called ChinAlive -- a Democracy movement he could never have imagined, with a mission the world thought long dead -- the overthrow of the Chinese government.

During the time of his captivity Charlie Evers is transformed from high school student to conspirator, terrorist, and refugee. In less than three months he, his family, and ChinAlive will know if the risks, the planning, and all their sacrifices will be enough to change the fate of the Chinese people. The question in the back of all their minds -- will any of them still be alive to see their hopes and dreams come true.