The beauty of weaving an anti-fracking agenda into a work of fiction is that drilling for natural gas can be demonized without a burden of proof. It is fiction after all.

And it’s precisely what James Browning did with his novel, “The Fracking King.” The July 1 release was not classified as young adult literature, but read like it. The hardcover ranked 37,351 in books on Amazon Best Sellers rankings as of July 21. Barnes and Noble said the book’s sales rank was 436,599 the same day.