"Quicksilver Chronicles" is one woman's surreal and satirical memoirs spanning about a decade, from the beginning of this new century, depicting what life throws at her family of gem-mining misfits struggling to live with a lethally polluted watershed in a forgotten western ghost town, called New Idria. As the James family copes with systematic mercury poisoning -- the aftermath of unscrupulous mining corporations, the U.S. Department of Defense, and a reservoir-hoarding drug rehab upstream -- their hopes of environmental justice diminish with each new anti-scientific edict enacted by the state. The tiny community earnestly elects an orange tabby, a people-hating cat, as Mayor to represent their micro-nation. Told through the eyes of Georgia James, the saga details the clan's run-ins with highgraders, UFOs, "Littlefoot," the insane "War on Drugs," and the absurd politics of the Bush/Cheney years.