Something new under the sun

A forty-something writer in the midst of an existential crisis, Patrick Hamlin leaves the East Coast of the United States for Los Angeles. While he's supposed to be supervising the screen adaptation of his novel, he finds himself tasked by the production company with keeping an eye on Cassidy Carter, the film's lead actress and young starlet, whose erratic behavior threatens to derail the project.
Between her whims and phone calls from his wife—who is devoting herself to treating her eco-anxiety and that of their daughter Nora—Patrick Hamlin's Hollywood adventure takes a strange turn. The film being shot seems very far removed from his novel, while California is ravaged by fires and a historic drought. Drinking water has disappeared and been replaced by a synthetic drink, called "WAT-R," which has mysterious effects on its consumers...
Something New Under the Sun is the novel of our time—a bold exploration of environmental catastrophe in the age of alternative facts, and “a ghost story, not of the past, but of the near future” (The New York Times).