Author Marty Essen is excited about his new book, “Doctor Refurb,” which will be officially released on September 18 to kick off Banned Books Week. It’s a controversial book, it’s about time travel, and it’s going to raise some hackles, but Essen is evidently looking forward to that.
This is the seventh book by Essen, and it’s a novel. He describes it as “an unconventional, satirical, controversial, time travel comedy.”
However, said Essen, “Every book I write is based on fact. Obviously, the time travel is not fact but what I wanted to do with this book is put a number on which politicians today are causing catastrophic global warming (facts) and how much each person is hastening the end of a liveable planet.”
“Everything I write is political,” he added, “and also very funny. This is a very funny book.”
It starts out in western Montana during the Covid-19 pandemic. Local surgeon Dr. Stephan Westin hears a voice in his head, saying, “If you ask us, they’ll be gum.” The message is from an alien who is just learning to speak English, which is why the message doesn’t really make sense. What he was trying to say, and the doctor finally figures out, is, “If you ask us, they’ll be gone.”
All Dr. Westin has to do is ask, and any environmental villains he identifies will be deported by the alien to a “depository planet.” His mission is to get rid of bad people (each person is worth a certain number of years) to add 200 years to earth’s life. However, every time a villain is deported, one of Dr. Westin’s body parts is replaced with a “refurbished” part that is better and stronger than the real one. As he rids the world of the worst environmental offenders, he slowly becomes “Doctor Refurb.”
“He has to go through this painful process to save the earth,” says Essen, “dealing with many moral dilemmas in making these decisions.”
The second half of the book involves time travel. A character who is an alien who started out occupying the head of Jesus Christ has since then been bouncing from body to body doing evil. “So Doctor Refurb has to travel through history to try to stop this evil alien,” says Essen. He and his companions go back in time to find the evil alien at actual historical events (more facts). Eventually they find the him in Salem, Massachusetts during the infamous ‘witch’ trials (facts again).
“I’m trying to show how throughout history Christian Nationalism has been used for evil,” says Essen. “I’m trying to show people the damage that politicians have done to our planet. No one ever gets convicted for poisoning a region where people die 25 years later. These ‘slow murders’ are never accounted for.”
Essen describes the book as “heartrending, yet hilarious. Doctor Refurb is influenced by actual historical events and confronts the serious subjects of climate change, far-right politics, and child abuse committed by Christian authorities.”
“It all sounds depressing but it’s the funniest book I’ve ever written,” says Essen, “because I do all this with humor.”
Essen will have a book signing at Chapter One Book Store in Hamilton on Wednesday, September 21 at 6 p.m. He will also be promoting his sixth book, “Hits, Heathens and Hippos: Stories from an Agent, Activist and Adventurer,” a memoir that came out during the pandemic and so he hasn’t been able to promote it. So, two book tours in one. He said the book follows his life of environmental activism, starting with his protesting snowmobiles in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA), a big wilderness in northern Minnesota (Essen grew up in Duluth). The protest resulted in the passage of a bill that protects the BWCA from snowmobiles. Essen also ran a talent agency in Minnesota before moving to Montana in 1996.
Essen said he moved to the Bitterroot “not realizing that I had moved into one of the most conservative areas in Montana. There’s a lot in the book about the shock of that.” And lots of other stories, too. For example, Essen loves the sport of baseball and started a Bitterroot Baseball League for adults. But he had to give it up because “the sportsmanship was so poor. Players started throwing the balls at the umpires when they didn’t like how they were calling the balls and strikes. That was it for me.”
“We got some great players, we even had pro tryouts, but the players stopped having fun,” he said. “I got threatened when I kicked a player out for poor sportsmanship. So I shut down the league.”
Essen also ran a telecommunications company for a number of years, before becoming a full-time writer. He began writing professionally in the 1990s as a features writer for Gig Magazine. His first book, the non-fiction “Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents,” won six national awards, and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune named it a “Top Ten Green Book.” His second non-fiction book, “Endangered Edens: Exploring the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Costa Rica, the Everglades, and Puerto Rico,” won four national awards. His previous novels include “Time Is Irreverent,” “Time Is Irreverent 2: Jesus Christ, Not Again!” and “Time Is Irreverent 3: Gone for 16 Seconds,” all of which became Amazon #1 Best-Sellers in multiple categories.
Now he travels all over the nation, often accompanied by his wife Deb, speaking at colleges. “I’ve spoken in 45 states at hundreds of colleges” over the last 15 years, he says. Essen said he might do part of his college show titled “Around the World in 90 Minutes” and based on “Cool Creatures, Hot Planet” at the Chapter One event. “I try to make my presentations different and fun, he said. “It will be a fun event.”
“I consider myself a satirist and political activist,” said Essen. “‘Doctor Refurb’ is a very funny book – liberals will laugh out loud. Conservatives will fume.”
Essen and his wife were recently returning from a speaking tour and they took a side trip to Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake, one of their favorite places to visit when they’re in the Salt Lake area. They were shocked to find that the lake was dry for 100 yards out from shore. They were so upset, they cut their trip short and came home.
“How can people like Mitt Romney deny global warming when they see their own lake drying up right before their eyes… this is kind of why I write my books. I’m never going to convince these people, but a hundred years from now someone is going to say, ‘Yes, Marty Essen had it right.’”