SEDUCED

Tenacious, novice banker, Rian Reston, rises from a broken family to be bilked out of an immense sum in a small Colorado mountain town. He's fired. Without money, friends or family, he contemplates suicide. At the last moment, he gets menial work on a failing cattle ranch. While there, he meets his mentor, Reggie, who hires Rian. 

Unbeknownst to the two, the bank employing them is owned by Scaratucci, a mobster using it to launder money. While working at the bank, Rian meets tree-hugger Missy and her friend, Tablita, a Native American woman and US Senator. Meeting Missy changes everything Rian knows and feels about love.

Then, a long nation-wide power outage hits America. It inspires Rian to seek a solution to the fragile bank payment system, Rian uncovers ancient deep layers of bank deception in plain sight, with bankers pretending to take in deposits they lend in their communities. Scaratucci's bard-quoting hitman is turned loose when Rian learns how to prevent payment pandemonium in predatory banks, as happened in 2008. To carry it out, Rian and Missy start a political movement.

Tablita presents Rian's idea to Congress and his testimony before them, raises his stature in the media's eyes. Following his idea, the legislation threatens to end the mafia's money laundering and banks harming people. Congress and the vacillating President are caught up in the public's protests who are mad as hell. Public protests demand Congress pass the proposed Public Payment Act, creating a secure payment system without private banks. That spark turns Rian's grassroots movement into a raging prairie fire that sweeps the county.

The author, D.L. Johnson was born in Honolulu, Hawaii and raised in a military family and served in the US Army during the Vietnam War. He is an architect and planner from a Colorado pioneer farm family coming to the state in 1903. He earned a BFA degree from the University of Colorado Boulder and received the University's Medal of Honor a Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters. He resides in Colorado with his wife Jeni and two Siamese cats.

Elizabeth Ridley was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She has a bachelor's degree in journalism from Northwestern University and a master's degree in creative writing from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England.