Seventh Flag

The US and Europe have unraveled since World War II and radicalism has metastasized into every community, tearing away the decency, optimism, and security that shaped those robust democracies for more than eight decades. No place is immune, including the small West Texas town of Dell City, where four generations of an iconic American family and a Syrian Muslim family carve a farming empire out of the unforgiving high desert. These families’ partnership is as unlikely as the idea of a United States, and their powerful friendship can be traced back to a bloody knife fight in a Juarez cantina just after World War II. The bond forged that night between Jack Laws, an Irish American who staked his claim in West Texas after the war, and Ali Zarkan, whose great-grandfather sailed from the Middle East to Texas in the mid-1800s as part of President Franklin Pierce’s attempt to create the US Army Camel Corps, shapes each generation of the families as they come of age and adapt to shifting paradigms of gender, commerce, patriotism, loyalty, religion, and sexuality. From the beaches of the Western Pacific to the battlefields of the Middle East and from the lawless streets of Juarez to the darkest corners of the Internet, the two families fight real and perceived enemies—journeying, as they do, through the football fields of Texas and West Point, the hippie playgrounds of Asia, the music halls of Austin, the terrorist cells of Europe and the political backrooms where fortunes are gained or lost over the rights to Western water. Underlying their experiences is the basic question of what constitutes identity and citizenship in America, or in Texas, a land over which six flags have flown. The seventh flag, ultimately, is not one of a state or a nation, but of a mosaic of cultures, religions, and people from every corner of the world—all struggling to define what it means to be unified under an ambiguous banner.

Before 1986, Texas enjoyed a world-class image. Due to the oil crisis, the Savings and Loan debacle, bank failures, and the real estate market crash, Texas is on the verge of economic collapse. With tragedy striking all around, Sidney Gordon's life is about to change along with the future of her home state. After the death of her husband, Sidney is encouraged by Oliver Eberly, a Texas businessman and former United States congressman, to accept the job of press secretary for the governor of Texas. For the first time, she finds herself compromised by her personal responsibilities as a mother and her own undefined ambitions as a woman. Thrown into a world both foreign to her experience and nature, Sidney must rise to the challenge and tap into her inner reserves with the determination and tenacity of a pumping East Texas oil well. Often stretched beyond her limits with one high-pressure conflict after another, Sidney discovers that the destiny of the state lies in her hands. With the backing of her blue-ribbon committee of scholars and experts, she forms the Austin Agenda and heads to Washington with a solution so controversial it stalks the thin line of treason.

This final novel in the acclaimed Seventh Flag Trilogy thrusts readers thirty years into the future—a dystopic reality of regional fiefdoms, marauding scavengers, and the quest for ultimate power: the Algorithms of everything, which have been secretly pilfered from an undersea Internet cable, stored on hard drives, and implanted in the last surviving blue whale. Ademar Zarkan—the iconic and unlikely heroine of the American West, now a seventy-year-old woman—leads the Free People of West Texas in an alliance with Native Americans and the indigenous people of northern Mexico to retrieve the hard drives and to rescue her clairvoyant granddaughter from the radicalized Sisterhood and its merciless leader, Mother. But they aren’t the only ones in pursuit of the Algorithms. Haunting and prophetic, Algorithms is a story of violent extremism, resilience, family, and, above all, the interconnectedness of humankind and the natural world.

Learn leadership skills to rise above the status quo and do whatever it takes to achieve your vision with this practical and inspirational guide. Everyone faces challenges on a daily basis. They range from inconveniences and temporary setbacks to major life events that can permanently alter someone’s trajectory. These challenges have the power to define us or even defeat us—but only if we let them. Because no matter what gets in the way, every person gets to decide how their story plays out. Survivor contestant Carolyn J. Rivera knows this first-hand. She’s experienced the discouragement of defeat as well as the realization that everyone has the power within them to overcome life’s greatest challenges. Through personal stories, relatable examples, and specific calls to action, Plant Your Flag breaks down the steps necessary to pick yourself up, get ahead, and lead the charge to VICTORY no matter what path you’re on.

Charlie Christmas, Ademar Zarkan, and Prometheus Stone are the best of America—united by war, scarred by displacement, and resolute in the face of the troubles that rip the nation apart over three decades. Christmas, a Somali translator with a split personality, and Zarkan, a Muslim sharpshooter who defies gender and religious constraints to graduate from West Point, are first brought together by Stone, a lapsed Jew and an Army captain, amidst war and famine in East Africa. Their ensuing journey—which takes them from the mean streets of Mogadishu to the high desert of West Texas, from the barren plains of Indian country to the rolling hills of Minnesota—is at turns tragic and uplifting. Charlie’s son, Amir, is the bookmark in their lives, and the struggle to raise him amid the predators of white supremacy and violent radicalism is their life’s work. With the help of Buck, the bomb-sniffing dog with a nose for danger, they prevail over Somali militias, pirates, white supremacists, and ISIS terrorists in a splintering world that has turned on itself like a serpent in the singularly obscene act of devouring its own tail. A sweeping novel that digs deep into the backstories of some of the beloved West Texas characters from Seventh Flag, Balman’s award-winning debut novel, Murmuration is a mesmerizing story of what it means to be American in the twenty-first century.

This book explains how to draw some of Georgia's sights and symbols, including the state seal, the Cherokee rose, and the bobwhite quail.