Electric Dreams: Synopsis

When Berkeley graduate Eric Ryan is sent by Teach for America to a high school in northeastern North Carolina, all he knows about where he's going is that it's poor, it's rural, and it's in the South.

Eric is from California. He has never been to North Carolina, never been to the South, only ever traveled to the East Coast once in his life, for a week, for an academic trip during high school.

In Berkeley, they have earthquakes and Buddhist monks. In North Carolina, they have tornados and church on Sunday. In Berkeley, they eat tofu and organics. In North Carolina, they eat grits and collards, and if you said you were macrobiotic, people might ask if you'd seen a doctor for that.

In Berkeley, Eric has a stereo, a pair of Birkenstocks, and a 1971 orange VW squareback, Henrietta Abigail McMalley. In North Carolina, he's not even sure he'll have electricity.

But the surprises that await him in Northampton County, North Carolina, are none of the ones he might have imagined. And just when he's settled in nicely, acquired a pickup truck and a taste for sweet tea and Carolina barbecue, comes the most unexpected surprise of all. One morning the door to his classroom pops open and Harold Miller, the school's venerable auto mechanics teacher, a born Tarheel steeped in NASCAR and motor oil, sticks his head in and announces, "We're going to build us an electric car!"

An elite group of technical high schools from throughout the mid-Atlantic region has been challenged to design and build battery powered electric vehicles, with a final competition to determine the best and the fastest scheduled to be hosted at the legendary NASCAR track, Richmond International Raceway. When their own struggling school unexpectedly gets a chance to join the competition, Eric, Harold, and an unlikely cast of students, teachers, parents, and volunteers have six months to the showdown, with few resources to rely upon besides pride, determination, and a local talent for jerry-rigging almost anything.

Electric Dreams is a high-voltage true adventure of odds too long and time too short; of home-grown ingenuity and the strengths of a small community; of starting with almost nothing and ending up traveling far beyond all your expectations.

Date posted: 5.12.04

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