Southern California’s Salton Sea has always carried a certain unsettling allure, a place where heat shimmers off the horizon and the landscape feels both abandoned and alive. In Salton Sea Tales, author Gabriel B. Wisdom transforms that eerie real-world backdrop into the setting for a high-stakes eco-thriller that merges environmental peril with cartel intrigue and a relentless fight for survival.
A speculative adventure with the propulsion of crime suspense, Salton Sea Tales drops readers into the sun-scorched heart of the desert, where fortune and catastrophe sit side by side. The novel begins with a mysterious plane crash, an inciting event that quickly unravels into something much larger: a volatile web of murder, lithium mining, and power struggles that stretch from the desert floor to shadowy backroom dealings.
At the center of the story are two sharply drawn figures:
Charles Horse, a cunning tribal leader whose history is as layered as the land he inhabits, and
Dr. Geoff “Mahalo” Mulholland, a brilliant but haunted scientist whose once-contained life is shattered by violence and conspiracy.
As tensions mount, alliances shift, and the ground beneath them becomes increasingly unstable, the characters are forced to navigate a terrain where every decision comes with consequences. From underground caverns to anarchic desert outposts, from cartel boardrooms to the unpredictable waters of the Salton Sea itself, the novel builds a world where the lines between justice and survival blur, and morality becomes a moving target.
What gives the book additional resonance is Wisdom’s unusual professional background, which lends a sharp edge to the story’s themes of risk, consequence, and human ambition.
Wisdom is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of American Money Management, LLC, and his long career in finance brings a sense of realism to the economic motives driving the plot. At the same time, he’s no stranger to storytelling or cultural commentary. He spent years in broadcasting at legendary rock radio stations KGB-FM San Diego and KMET-FM Los Angeles, and hosted Brainstorm, a nationally syndicated radio show sponsored by Omni Magazine. He has also provided market commentary for major outlets including CBS radio, NPR, KNX Los Angeles (2003–2021), and Mottek on Money on KABC Los Angeles.
Wisdom is also the author of Wisdom on Value Investing, published by John Wiley & Sons and translated into Chinese by China Citic Press. His academic credentials deepen the speculative elements of his fiction as well: he holds an MA in Novel Writing and a PhD in Speculative Fiction from Middlesex University, London.
In Salton Sea Tales, Wisdom challenges readers to consider where reality ends and invention begins, using the desert’s harsh beauty as a stage for questions about extraction, ethics, and what people will do when the stakes are life-or-death. The result is a timely, adrenaline-charged story for anyone drawn to environmental suspense, moral complexity, and thriller momentum that never lets up.
