Altar to an Erupting Sun is a near-future story of one community facing climate disruption in the critical decade ahead. Rae Kelliher is a veteran environmental activist and pioneer in the death-with-dignity movement. Facing a diagnosis of terminal illness, she engages in a shocking suicide murder, taking the life of an oil company CEO for his role in delaying responses to climate disruption. Seven years 

later, Rae’s friends and family gather at her Vermont farm community to try to understand her violent exit and the rapid social transformations around them. 

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In the spirit of the popular film, Don’t Look Up, the forthcoming novel, Altar to an Erupting Sun, aims to popularize an understanding of climate change.  Most unusual is its focus attention on the decades-long culpability of the fossil fuel industry in funding denial movements, blocking change. and locking us on course to an uninhabitable earth.

Altar lifts up the history of several important movements over the last forty years including the grassroots anti-nuclear power, Central America solidarity, and effort to shut down the School of Americas.  Rae Kelliher, the lead character in the story, is also part of anti-eviction movements in Boston and efforts to stop construction of a fracked gas pipeline. 

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​Collins also depicts real time tactical debates among climate change activists about direct action, destruction of property, and how to focus attention on the leaders of the fossil fuel industry.