Tesla Code: Book One: Summer: 1

Some stories find you when you least expect them.This one started with a question that wouldn't leave me alone: What if Nikola Tesla - one of the greatest minds who ever lived - left behind something the world wasn't ready for? And what if an ordinary teenager, in the most unlikely place, was the one to find it?Tesla's Summer is a work of fiction, but it is rooted in real places, real history, and real wonder. Smiljan, the tiny Croatian village where Marko finds himself exiled one summer, is the actual birthplace of Nikola Tesla. Plitvice Lakes, with its impossible turquoise waterfalls, is one of Croatia's most breathtaking natural treasures. The katakombs beneath Zagreb's old town are real - ancient stone tunnels carved into the hillside, full of history and secrets. These places exist, and they are every bit as magical as I have tried to make them feel on these pages.Tesla himself was real, of course - brilliantly, stubbornly, tragically real. He dreamed of a world where energy was free, where electricity flowed through the air like radio waves, available to everyone regardless of wealth or geography. He called it the World Wireless System. He spent his fortune on it. And then the money ran out, the powerful men who funded him walked away, and the dream was buried.I have always wondered: what if it wasn't completely buried?Marko's story is about more than Tesla's lost technology. It is about what happens when a young person - angry, lost, convinced the world has nothing to offer him - discovers that he has more to offer the world than he ever imagined. It is about friendship forged under pressure, love found in unexpected places, and the courage it takes to stand up to power when everything inside you is screaming to run.It is about Croatia - a small country with an enormous heart, a complicated history, and a people who have learned, generation after generation, that the most important things in life cannot be bought or sold.