Why Salt Lake?
300 years ago salt was more valuable than gold. Now it is again.
Salt Lake City, Utah, provides the ideal setting for the series. The City is located in a beautiful picturesque setting amongst the mountains and Great Salt Lake. The world headquarters for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) is located in Salt Lake City, providing a guiding influence over a predominantly white community. There is also a significant push to support the technology industry within the City and State.
But beneath the clean and shiny exterior, Salt Lake suffers from some of the same ills as the rest of the country, particularly when it concerns drug use and abuse. While massive growth in over-dose deaths via methamphetamine and opioid use mirror the problem in other American communities but carry a heavy burden for the City’s Church and Community leaders.
Bob Lear’s children attend a private school in Highland, UT. The name of the school is “J. Robert Oppenheimer Academy.” The private school was founded by World War II veteran Jake Russell (Private First Class, US Marine Corps) in the early 1950’s. Private Russell served in the Pacific theatre and was wounded in the battle of Iwo Jima. He was sent to Hawaii to rest and recover. Once his injury had healed, he was scheduled to go back to Japan to be part of the invasion.
They had prepared for months in Hawaii. Private Russell credited Robert Oppenheimer with bringing and end to the war with Japan and quite likely saving his life. At the end of the war, Private Russell was stationed in Japan to begin the occupation. He decided to stay for a number of years in Japan as part of the occupation, and eventually made some business connections and invested in pharmaceutical companies that grew rapidly. He eventually made millions of dollars that he brought back to Salt Lake City and reinvested in the community, including the establishment of J. Robert Oppenheimer Academy. The private school is the staging ground for the main characters involved in Bob’s GWT business that becomes a legitimate front for his cocaine distribution operation.
The introduction of a cocaine-based operation out of the seemingly sanitary setting of Salt Lake City provides a compelling struggle over the morality of choosing the lesser of two evils in order to benefit one particular group of individuals.