[close] Probably the best way to introduce myself is via the openings of my two published novels. Writing them gave me more joy than any other work I've done.

THE CROWNING CIRCLE
Copyright © 2001 J R Lankford
All rights reserved

Thursday, 9:03 a.m.
Oaklawn District, Chatsford, Ohio
Gloria Wentworth Hampton stood in her driveway, her face shaded by her broad-brimmed gardening hat. She wished the shadow would somehow widen, darken, descend to the ground, and envelop her. Since coming to America from England a year ago, she’d often felt this way.
“Do come with us, Mum. Won’t you please?” her daughter begged, pulling at her skirts.
“Maybe another time, darling . . . ” Gloria began and, from recent habit, looked up and down the sidewalk. It was vacant except for a boy, perhaps eighteen, wearing jeans and plaid shirt. To Gloria he looked the typical American male, who thought himself a Wild West cowboy. She glanced away, feeling suddenly empty, wondering why she’d become so judgmental.
“Gloria, really!”
Her husband, Jim, held their son’s hand and looked exasperated.
“Surely we should go as a family,” he said. “It’s their Founder’s Day.”
“Please, Jim, I just — I don’t feel good about that air show. None of us should go."


THE JESUS THIS
Copyright © 2003 J R Lankford
All rights reserved

Wednesday p.m., January 12—Turin, Italy

For the better part of his forty-two years, Dr. Felix Rossi had wanted to be here in the Capella Della Sacra Sindone, the chapel at the top of the stairs in the Duomo, Turin’s Renaissance cathedral, when priests came to open the tabernacle. Only six times before in the twentieth century had it happened and rarely in the presence of anyone but the priests. He’d wanted to stand beneath Guarini’s famous glass-paned dome as the sun cast dazzling kaleidoscopes of brilliance down through the tabernacle’s iron gates. The day had, at last, arrived.

In awe he waited with Father Bartolo, black marble beneath their feet, a white marble balustrade surrounding them, angels at each end. Everywhere in this chapel its designer, Guarini, had put statues of angels. For over four hundred years they had been here—blowing trumpets, playing harps, flying on spread wings, hovering in a frozen watch as they guarded Christianity’s most famous relic. Sunlight flashed off the pair of gold Cherubs above the gates and the two Archangels leaning on their staffs as if to regard only him. In the brilliant light, Felix Rossi could barely see, but he couldn’t look away. He would remember this moment until he died.







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