G. Wayne Miller's Blog, page 7
October 28, 2021
Traces of Mary, coming on March 8, 2022. from Crossroad Press. Pre-order now!
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Dedication
To David Wilson and David Dodd, with heartfelt thanks for keeping my sci-fi, horror, mystery and fantasy torch burning brightly! And for all that both of you have done for so many other authors, too. Cast of characters In order of appearance
Tanya Audette, a young girl who lives in Boston.
Sophie Audette, her mother. Zachary Pearlman, Boston shop proprietor and owner of Fluffy, a French poodle.
Billy McAllister, a young boy who lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
Jessica McAllister, his older sister.
Mary Lambert McAllister, their mother.
The Rev. John Lambert, S.J., “Uncle Jack,” Mary’s brother, a Jesuit priest.
Alice McKay Lambert, “Grammy,” Mary and Fr. Jack’s mother, of Blue Hill, Maine.
George Linwood Lambert, “Grampa,” Alice’s late husband and father of Mary and Jack.
Mr. Hawthorne, a mortician.
Amanda Leroux, a social worker at the homeless center Fr. Jack runs in Boston.
Stephen McAllister, Mary’s estranged husband and the father of her two children.
Andre Washington, Billy’s best friend.
Paul “Angel” Iannotti, 14, a school dropout and bully.
Ordo, leader of the Priscillas, the good species in a distant galaxy.
Alex Borkowski, Billy’s and Andres’s second-best friend.
Crimson Vanner, a drug addict and dealer.
Z-DA, last of the Lepros, an evil species in a distant galaxy.
Juan Sierra, a property owner in Providence, R.I.
Rudolph Howe Sr. and Jr., lawyers in Providence, R.I.
Mrs. Bartholomew, father of a boy burned in an amusement-park fire.
Lt. Perry Callahan, a Providence police detective.
Amanda Leroux’s mother, an elderly woman who lives on Massachusetts’ North Shore.
Erica Han, a reporter with the Bangor Daily News.
Charlie Moonlight, a Native American spiritual leader. Readers may recognize him from the horror novel Thunder Rise, first book in the Thunder Rise trilogy.
Chapter One: Heaven and earth.
Saturday, May 29, 2021
Billy McAllister’s sister is dead.
Billy knows that.
But time cannot steal the young boy’s memories. Time—four years, one month and 19 days of time—and still Jess appears in his dreams.
Sometimes in these dreams, she is calling to him.
She is someplace dark and cold, someplace distant and unreachable, no place he’s ever been or wants to go. He sees nothing but Jess’s face, illuminated softly by an unseen light. It’s a sad face, not the face he wants to remember—not the face in that photograph Mommy keeps on her bedroom bureau. Tears cover both cheeks. Her hair is tousled, her lips cracked and dry, her eyes wide and dark and empty, as if not really her eyes, but fake ones constructed of cheap glass.
She is clutching her favorite stuffed animal, Baby Bear, the Teddy bear that Santa brought.
Baby Bear looks sad, too.
“Help us, Billy!” Jess calls in these dreams. “Me and Baby Bear! Let us out of here! We don’t want to be dead! We want to be with you and Mommy and Uncle Jack!”
Billy reaches for his sister then—but always she’s too far, and the distance to her is increasing, and Jess is shrinking, is getting smaller and smaller, until finally she is gone.
But in other dreams, it is summer—the summer of 2015, when they took that photograph so dear to Mommy’s heart. The summer five years before the coronavirus pandemic, which devastated America and the world.
He was six that summer of 2015, Jess barely five. Her health had once again gotten better, and with every day, there was less talk of that “Pitts-bird” hospital, where she had spent so much time as the doctors fixed her one time and then, when she fell ill again, a second time.
Mommy was better, too. Mommy was not so upset all the time, wasn’t short-tempered and grouchy and crying and yelling and screaming at him when he hadn’t done anything at all.
Uncle Jack, who usually took Billy’s side, said that after all the bad stuff involving Jess’s health, the family deserved a good stretch—that it was always darkest before dawn, and now the sun was climbing high into the sky.
They spent June and July at Grammy’s. Her house, larger than any house Jess and Billy had ever been inside, was in Blue Hill Falls, Maine, that magical seaside place where the mountain really was blue, at least when viewed from a distance. It was major fun, those two months, ice cream and corn on the cob and lobster and fried clams and staying up until ten or even eleven o’clock, way past regular bedtime. The ocean, cold as it was until August, when you might be able to handle a few minutes’ swim without shivering, was the best.
Almost every day, they played on the little beach there at Blue Hills Falls, where Grammy’s house overlooked Mt. Desert Narrows.
It was go-easy play because they had to be very careful of Jess. They had to keep the saltwater from those big zig-zaggy scars across her tummy, evidence of where surgeons had transplanted one liver into her, and then a second when the first had failed. They had to keep sunblock all over her, and she had to wear a straw hat and her Elsa sunglasses.
Jess tired pretty easily, but she had spurts of energy, too, and during them, they climbed rocks and hunted for periwinkles and fiddler crabs and built sandcastles and went sailing with Mom and Uncle Jack on Grammy’s big boat.
“How big is the ocean?” Jess always liked to ask.
“Bigger than the biggest lake in the world,” Grammy would answer.
“Wow, that’s huge!” Billy would say.
“Almost as big as heaven,” said Uncle Jack, a Jesuit priest who liked to shed his Roman collar on his occasional visits to Maine.
“Heaven is where Grampa is,” Grammy would say.
“I want to meet him some day!” Jess would say.
“No you don’t,” her mother said on one occasion.
A dark memory had welled up within her and she said no more.
Grammy wagged her finger at Mary and quickly changed the subject, to the fairy-tale story of how her parents had met.
“My mother was a young girl living in Nova Scotia when one summer day, she and a friend drove to Burntcoat Head Park to see the amazing tides at the Bay of Fundy,” Grammy said. “Do you children know about those?”
“No!” Jess and Billy said.
“Highest tides in the world,” Grammy said. “One of the seven or eight or nine or ten Wonders of the World, I’ve lost count. People come from all over to see.”
“Wow,” Jess said. “Can we go there one day, Mom?”
“That would be nice,” Mary said.
“So there was my mother, Miss Alice O’Reilly,” Grammy continued, “when my father, George McKay of Blue Hill Falls, Maine, happened to be visiting there with friends. They’d taken the old steamer up from Bar Harbor to Halifax for a week-long holiday. And there was Miss Alice, watching the tide roll in with a rumble and a roar. Their eyes met, and both later said it was love at first sight. The rest, as they say, is history. They married, Alice and George moved in here, and along came I, their only child.”
“Cool,” Jess said.
“Neat,” said Billy.
The question of what happened after that did not arise.
Not that summer.
Rainy days, they stayed inside Grammy’s mansion and made mischief with her three cats and Tuggs the bulldog, a good-natured old hound that was Grammy’s favorite pet. Once, when it was cloudy and cool but the heavens hadn’t opened up, Jess and Billy snuck off to the family cemetery and mausoleum, which stood in a grove of pines on a bluff overlooking the ocean. Two hundred years of McKays and their spouses and other relatives were buried there—a few in the marble crypt erected by Grammy’s great-grandfather, Samuel McKay, who’d made his fortune in the clipper trade and then, in a move that shocked his Yankee friends and associates, converted to Catholicism after a Jesuit priest who was said to possess the power of healing had laid his hands on his abdomen and cured him of the colon cancer that had been consuming him.
The burial ground and mausoleum, where Jess herself would be laid to rest in less than a year, was strictly off-limits and the one time Mommy found them nosing around there, she went ape. That was the only time they were punished that summer, although they got off easy, only one day without TV and no dessert.
The attic was also strictly off-limits, but there was no chance of them of getting up there, much as curiosity compelled them: the door was padlocked and nailed shut.
“But why?” Jess asked one time
The response remained as vivid as yesterday to Billy.
Grammy, he remembered, said “attics are no good for anything but collecting dust,” and then she fought tears. Mommy convulsed, as if pain had pierced her body, and after screaming “do NOT ever ask again,” she went into the kitchen, where she poured a tall glass of hard liquor.
“Grammy’s right,” said Uncle Jack, who visited as often as his busy schedule would allow. “Attics do nothing but collect dust, and dust does no one any good. Now come into the library, my precious niece and nephew. I have a new book I’d like to read to you. One Morning in Maine is the title. It’s a classic I’m sure you will enjoy—more than the average bear!”
That was one of Uncle Jack’s favorite lines, an ode to his niece’s love of the Teddy variety.
In early August, as the Maine water was approaching swimming temperature, Uncle Jack drove up again from Boston. He stayed the weekend and on Monday morning, he took everyone back to Rhode Island so Mommy could apartment-hunt. The first place they visited was affordable, and near a school where Jess could start kindergarten and Billy, first grade.
So they took it. That night, they celebrated by visiting Ocean State Park, where they rode the merry-go-round and Ferris wheel, ate all the cotton candy they wanted, and had their picture taken in a booth.
By Labor Day 2015, Jess’s health was deteriorating again.
In April 2016, she would die.
Traces of Mary, coming in 2022 from Crossroad Press
Dedication
To David Wilson and David Dodd, with heartfelt thanks for keeping my sci-fi, horror, mystery and fantasy torch burning brightly! And for all that both of you have done for so many other authors, too. Cast of characters In order of appearance
Tanya Audette, a young girl who lives in Boston.
Sophie Audette, her mother. Zachary Pearlman, Boston shop proprietor and owner of Fluffy, a French poodle.
Billy McAllister, a young boy who lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
Jessica McAllister, his older sister.
Mary Lambert McAllister, their mother.
The Rev. John Lambert, S.J., “Uncle Jack,” Mary’s brother, a Jesuit priest.
Alice McKay Lambert, “Grammy,” Mary and Fr. Jack’s mother, of Blue Hill, Maine.
George Linwood Lambert, “Grampa,” Alice’s late husband and father of Mary and Jack.
Mr. Hawthorne, a mortician.
Amanda Leroux, a social worker at the homeless center Fr. Jack runs in Boston.
Stephen McAllister, Mary’s estranged husband and the father of her two children.
Andre Washington, Billy’s best friend.
Paul “Angel” Iannotti, 14, a school dropout and bully.
Ordo, leader of the Priscillas, the good species in a distant galaxy.
Alex Borkowski, Billy’s and Andres’s second-best friend.
Crimson Vanner, a drug addict and dealer.
Z-DA, last of the Lepros, an evil species in a distant galaxy.
Juan Sierra, a property owner in Providence, R.I.
Rudolph Howe Sr. and Jr., lawyers in Providence, R.I.
Mrs. Bartholomew, father of a boy burned in an amusement-park fire.
Lt. Perry Callahan, a Providence police detective.
Amanda Leroux’s mother, an elderly woman who lives on Massachusetts’ North Shore.
Erica Han, a reporter with the Bangor Daily News.
Charlie Moonlight, a Native American spiritual leader. Readers may recognize him from the horror novel Thunder Rise, first book in the Thunder Rise trilogy.
October 26, 2021
Forty years ago today, I started work at The ...
Forty years ago today, I started work at The Providence Journal.
I had arrived in town a young man with few material possessions and only three years’ experience at two other newspapers, The Cape Cod Times and before that, The Transcript in North Adams, Mass. (no journalism degree, nor even a course). What I did bring was a lot of excitement to be joining the staff of a place that justifiably had earned a reputation as a writers' paper.
An editor named Joel Rawson was behind that rich writing culture and he had the support of his superiors, all the way up to the late Michael Metcalf, publisher and member of the manufacturing family that had owned The Journal for decades. Founded in 1829, The Journal was then and remains now the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in America.
My first two stories, reprinted at the bottom here, were penned during an initiation week in the newsroom at 75 Fountain St., after which I was assigned to the Greenville bureau. I spent a few months there, worked a few shifts at the State House, and then was moved to the Newport bureau. In late 1983, Joel brought me downtown full-time, with responsibility for the state prison system, state child services, and the state behavioral healthcare and developmental/intellectual disabilities systems.
Within a year, I had written the first of my many series, ``Building New Lives,'' a six-part exploration of deinstitutionalization that ran from Nov. 25 through Nov. 30, 1984. And thus a journalistic passion – behavioral and mental health – was born.
Five years later, publication of "Children of Poverty," about a Black woman and her children, began another journalistic passion that also continues to today: in-depth reporting about social, economic and health disparities and historical injustices.
In the ensuing years, I had the honor of working with some of the nation’s finest journalists who later moved to other publications, among them Dan Barry, Michael Corkery, C.J. Chivers, Sheryl Stolberg, Farnaz Fassihi and Helene Cooper, now at The New York Times; Kevin Sullivan and Paul Duggan, with The Washington Post; Mark Johnson, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; Jennifer Levitz, The Wall Street Journal; Mark Arsenault, The Boston Globe; Drake Witham, Dallas Morning News; and Tony Lioce, Tom Mulligan and Irene Wielawski, The Los Angeles Times. Also, Jon Karp, who after leaving The Journal became an editor at Random House and is now the president and CEO of Simon & Schuster. Jon bought and edited my first four non-fiction books, and later, from the S&S corner office, bought a fifth.
Other esteemed colleagues from those years eventually wound up in academia, including Wayne Worcester, Ira Chinoy, Mike Stanton, Berkley Hudson, Bruce Butterfield and Tracy Breton. Others stayed the course, and that long list includes Brian Jones, M. Charles Bakst, Randy Richard, Bill Reynolds and many others now retired. Several, like me, are still on staff: Tom Mooney, Mike Delaney, Peter Donahue, Katie Mulvaney, Jack Perry, Mark Patinkin, Paul Parker, Kathy Gregg, Linda Borg, Kris Craig and Bob Breidenbach.
What a ride it has been for this son of an airplane mechanic and a mother who was the daughter of poor Irish immigrants.
The Journal gave me many of the tools I needed to develop as a reporter – and also as a filmmaker, podcasterand author of 20 published books, non-fiction and fiction. My 21st, "Traces of Mary," will be published by Crossroad Press in 2022.
The Journal allowed me to witness the paper winning the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting and to be part of the team that was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, a recognition of our coverage of The Station nightclub fire that killed 100 and injured hundreds -- and the months of reporting and investigating that followed. Plus more paper and personal honors and prizes too numerous to list here. The Journal also gave me credibility for my community service efforts, notably as chairman (new emeritus) of the board of trustees of a public library.
And The Journal partnered with the Pell Center at Salve Regina University on the Story in the Public Square program, an initiative to celebrate, study and tell stories that matter. I am director of the program and co-host and co-producer, with Salve's Jim Ludes, of the Telly-winning show of the same name broadcast more than 500 times each week on public television stations coast-to-coast and heard five times each weekend on SiriusXM’s P.O.T.U.S. channel.
As I advanced in my career and had something to offer younger journalists -- and you know who you are! -- I mentored several of them (and still provide some guidance, when asked, even though most of these writers have moved to other stages). Yes, paying it forward.
When I break it all down, it comes to this: how lucky I am to have been able to tell stories about people from all walks of life, hundreds of people from admirable to despicable I never would have met in any other profession. This is a small sampling:
Stephen King, my favorite author since the first book of his that I read, 'Salem's Lot.
Directors Joel Schumacher and Steven Spielberg. U.S. Senators including Ted Kennedy, Jack Reed, Sheldon Whitehouse and Claiborne Pell, subject of one of my books, “An Uncommon Man.” Joe Biden. Many governors, mayors and other politicians. A murderer, an arsonist, and a rapist.
Longtime Zambarano Hospital resident, artist and disability rights champion the late Frank Beazley, one of my favorite people.
Some of the engineers who maintainthe Newport Bridge.
Dr. Hardy Hendren, former Chief of Surgery at Boston Children’s Hospital.
Plastic surgeon Patrick Sullivan.
Neil Corkery, who lives with Alzheimer's disease.
Melissa Fundakowski, who lives with schizophrenia.
Dr.C. Walton Lillehei, the father of open-heart surgery.
Roush/Fenway NASCAR king Jack Roush and several of his drivers.
Native Americans Paula Dove Jennings and Tomaquag Museum head Lorén M. Spears, who among other stories narrated the story of the Great Swamp Massacre of 1675, the most violent episode on Rhode Island soil.
Hasbro chairmen and CEOs Alan Hassenfeld and Al Verrecchia, now prominent philanthropists.
And many, many more, most of whom might be labeled “ordinary people” but who in truth were anything but. Some are listed at my bio here.
Let me close this little trip down Memory Lane with a video my then-teenage son shot of The Journal newsroom 13 years ago (CLICK to view) and thanks to editors who traveled with me, offering their time and energy not just to me and my colleagues, but also to an awesome newspaper tradition: among them, Joel Rawson, the late Chuck Hauser and Jim Wyman, Carol Young, Tom Heslin, Sue Areson, Karen Bordeleau, Alan Rosenberg, Mike McDermott and now, David Ng.
The late Jim Wyman, left, with Joel Rawson, Carol Young, Tom Heslin and Karen Bordeleau. I wrote Jim's obit and his widow placed that day's paper in his coffin for burial with him.
September 29, 2021
Wolf Hill: An essay from long ago.
I periodically repost some of my favorite essays. Here's one, set in autumn, my favorite season. I wrote this in October 1997, on a break from finishing my fourth book, Toy Wars: The Epic Struggle Between G.I. Joe, Barbie and the Companies That Make Them. Cal is a young adult today, living in Japan. Rachel and Katy have children of their own. Life, like a river, keeps on flowing.
WOLF HILL
An Essay About a Boy
We avoid the woods in summer. We don't like bugs, the ticks and mosquitoes especially, and anyway, we're drawn to the beach at Wallum Lake, which is just up the road. But early October finds us eager for the first killing frost. It came this year at the customary time, when the sugar maples are at their peak and the oaks are only beginning to turn. The temperature at dawn read 29 or 30 degrees, depending on the angle the thermometer was viewed. I figured if any of my city friends asked, I'd say 29.
By late afternoon, it had warmed to almost 50. The sky was cloudless and the breeze had shifted to the south. I put on my boots and vest and helped Cal, who is almost three, on with his. Our vests have large pockets, very important for walks in the woods. We went through the backyard and onto the cart path that ascends Wolf Hill, a fanciful name in the nineties, even for a rural town like ours. Cal's first priority was equipping himself with a stick. He found one about two feet long, and another slightly larger, which he gave me. ``Little boys need big sticks,'' he observed. I wholeheartedly agreed.
Young Calvin with his proud dad.Many years ago, when a farmhouse graced the top of Wolf Hill, the path could accommodate vehicles; one, a bus, ended its last journey up there and its rotting remains continue to be a source of wonderment to all who happen upon it. Every year the mountain laurel and pine claim more of the path, and this year was no exception, but there was still plenty of room -- more than sufficient, I informed Cal, for another good flying- saucer run this winter. Cal insisted on taking the lead and, unlike our last walk, in April, he refused assistance getting past deadfalls. He went under, or around, and then stopped to reveal the appropriate route to me. ``Dad, come on over here,'' he said at one point, ``that's a safe place to get by.''We climbed, past the inevitable stone walls, still remarkably intact, if mostly overgrown. The air seemed fresher as we continued, the light through the foliage stronger, and soon enough we'd reached the peak. Only a cellar hole is left of the farmhouse, destroyed some thirty years ago in a fire of suspicious origin. Rusting machinery, barrels and bedframes are strewn about, and the woods are slowly claiming them, too. We marveled together at a sight as strange as grape vines entwined around a bedframe, and I tried explaining how a house not unlike our own had been reduced to ruin, but I don't believe I succeeded, nor did I really try. I steered Cal's attention to the only grass on Wolf Hill, a small, sunlit remnant of lawn. We picked wildflowers, the last of the season. I did not know the species. They had thirteen petals and came in two shades: lavendar and white. The frost had not touched them. Cal was more interested in mushrooms. He'd been keen on mushrooms since our last swim at Wallum Lake, when he found ones as big as my hand that had materialized overnight beneath a picnic bench. He also gathered acorns, which he proposed to feed to squirrels, a word he still had difficulty pronouncing.
From the cellar hole, we descended to the quarry. I cautioned Cal not to run, but he explained that he was not -- this was skipping. I wanted to carry him or at least hold his hand; instead, I took a breath and was silent on the matter. The quarry has not been worked since the 1800s, but if you look around town, you will see many foundations made of its imperfect granite. Our own front steps, I am sure, came from here. Water has long filled where men once labored, of course, and a century's worth of sediment covers the bottom, making it impossible to gauge true depth (although we have tried, with our sticks). When Cal is a little older, I will tell him -- as I did his sisters -- spooky stories of the goings-on here when the moon is full. For now, we concern ourselves with water. It had not rained in over a week, and the stream that empties the quarry was dry. Our April walk was during a nor'easter, and we got soaked playing in the waterfall, but it was gone now, too. Cal was worried it would never return, but I reassured him it would, with the next steady downpour.
The shadows were lengthening and the temperature was edging down. An inventory of our pockets disclosed sticks, pebbles, acorns, flowers, mushrooms and a bright yellow leaf, which Cal had selected for his mom. We left the quarry and made our way back to the cart path through a stand of towering Balsam firs, unlike any other on Wolf Hill. When the girls were small, long before Cal was born, we found this place. It resembles a den, and the forest floor is softly carpeted and often dotted with toadstools -- certainly a spot, I allowed, where elves dance under the starry sky. Honest? Rachel and Katy were wide-eyed. There was only one way to know for sure, I said: Some fine summer night, we would have to camp out here, being careful to stay awake until midnight. We never did. Rachel is in high school now, and Katy, four years younger, is sneaking looks at Seventeen. Cal listened with great interest at the prospect of seeing elves. He was tired, and as I carried him home, I promised we'd camp out next summer, bugs and all. I intend to ask Rachel and Katy if they'd care to join us.
Copyright © 1997 G. Wayne Miller
July 5, 2021
Selections from Book Number 20, to be published soon
Herewith the beginning of the first chapter, and the last sentences of the epilogue. Stay tuned for publication details…
Mother Love
A science-fiction journeyinto horror and madness.And back.
Copyright 2021 by G. Wayne Millergwaynemiller.com
Chapter One.Saturday, May 29, 2021
Billy McAllister's sister is dead.
He knows that.
But time cannot steal the young boy’s memories. Time -- four years, one month and 19 days of time -- and still Jess appears in his dreams.
Sometimes, she is calling to him.
She is someplace dark and cold, someplace distant and unreachable, no place he's ever been or wants to go. He sees nothing but Jess's face, illuminated softly by an unseen light. It's a sad face, not the face he wants to remember -- not the face in that photograph Mommy keeps on her bedroom bureau. Tears cover both cheeks. Her hair is tousled, her lips cracked and dry, her eyes wide and dark and empty, as if not really her eyes, but fake ones constructed of cheap glass.
She is clutching her favorite stuffed animal, Lambie, the Teddy bear that Santa brought. Lambie looks sad, too.
``Help us, Billy!'' Jess calls in his dreams. ``Me and Lambie! Let us out of here! We don't want to be dead! We want to be with you and Mommy and Uncle Jack!''
Billy reaches for his sister then -- but always she's too far, and the distance to her is increasing, and Jess is shrinking, is getting smaller and smaller, until finally she is gone.
Other times, much happier times, it is summer -- the summer they took that photograph so dear to Mommy's heart. The summer long before the pandemic, when the world went mad.
He was six that summer, Jess barely five. Her sickness had finally gotten better, and with every day, there was less talk of that ``Pitts-bird'' hospital, where she spent so much time as the doctors tried to fix her.
Mommy was better, too. Mommy was not so upset all the time, wasn't short-tempered and grouchy and crying and yelling and screaming at him when he hadn't done anything at all.
Uncle Jack, who usually took Billy's side, said that after all the bad stuff involving Jess’s health, the family deserved a good stretch -- that it was always darkest before dawn, and now the sun was climbing into the sky.
They spent June and July at Grammy's. Her house – larger than any house Jess and Billy had ever been inside -- was in Blue Hill Falls, Maine, that magical seaside place where the mountain really was blue, at least from a distance. It was major fun, those two months, ice cream and corn on the cob and lobster and fried clams and staying up until ten or even eleven o'clock, way past regular bedtime. The ocean, cold as it was, at least until August, when you might be able to handle a few minutes’ swim without shivering, was the best.
Almost every day, they played on the little beach there at Blue Hills Falls, where Grammy’s house looked out over Mt. Desert Narrows.
It was go-easy play because they had to be very careful of Jess. They had to keep the saltwater from that great big zig-zaggy scar across her tummy, evidence of where surgeons had transplanted one liver into her, and then a second when the first had failed. They had to keep sunblock all over her, and she had to wear a straw hat and her Minnie Mouse sunglasses.
Jess tired pretty easily, but she had spurts of energy, too, and during them, they climbed rocks and hunted for periwinkles and fiddler crabs and built sandcastles and went sailing with Mom and Uncle Jack on Grammy’s big boat.
“How big is the ocean?” Jess always liked to ask.
“Bigger than the biggest lake in the world,” Grammy would answer.
“Wow, that’s huge!” Billy would say.
“Almost as big as heaven,” said Uncle Jack, a Jesuit priest who liked to shed his Roman collar on his occasional visits to Maine.
“Heaven is where Grampa is,” Grammy would say.
“I want to meet him some day!” Jess would say.
“No you don’t,” her mother said on one occasion.
A dark memory had welled up within her and she said no more.
Grammy wagged her finger at Mary, and quickly changed the subject, to the fairy-tale story of how her parents had met.
“My mother was a young girl living in Nova Scotia when one summer day, she and a friend drove to Burntcoat Head Park to see the amazing tides at the Bay of Fundy,” Grammy said. “Do you children know about those?”
“No!” Jess and Billy said.
“Highest tides in the world,” Grammy said. “One of the seven or eight or nine or ten Wonders of the World, I’ve lost count. People come from all over to see.”
“Wow,” Jess said. “Can we go there one day, Mom?”
“That would be nice,” Mary said.
“So there was my mother, Miss Alice O’Reilly, when my father, George McKay – your maternal grandmother – of Blue Hill Falls, Maine, happened to be there visiting with friends. They’d taken the old steamer up from Bar Harbor to Halifax for a week-long holiday. And there was Miss Alice, watching the tide roll in with a rumble and a roar. Their eyes met, and both later said it was love at first sight. The rest, as they say, is history. They married, Alice and George moved in here, and along came I, their only child.”
“Cool,” Jess said.
“Neat,” said Billy.
The question of what happened after that did not arise.
Not that summer.…
EPILOGUESunday, October 3Freeport, Nova Scotia
…A half hour later, a Honda Civic with Maine license plates pulled into the driveway. Mary was expecting a new guest, so she went out to greet the driver.
“Hannah Rosenthal?” Mary said.
“No, Erica Han,” the driver said, stepping out. “I’m a reporter with the Bangor, Maine, Daily News. You must be Mary McAllister.”
Mary concealed her surprise.
“No, I’m Mary Waletzky,” she said. “Helper-in-chief of the Prana Center.”
Han showed her a copy of the August 3 Daily News. Mary McAllister’s photograph was on the front page, illustrating Han’s story.
“An unspeakable tragedy,” Mary said. “But you are not the first person to mistake me for her. The resemblance is striking. Spooky, really. I hope is there is closure some day for everyone affected by the deaths or her and her son. I can only imagine the pain.”
“Are you sure you’re not Mary McAllister?” Han said.
“As sure as my Nova Scotia license confirms I’m Mary Waletzky,” Mary said. “Wait a minute and I’ll get it for you. Would you like to see my passport, too?”
“That won’t be necessary,” Han said.
Mary went into her office and returned with her license.
The reporter scrutinized it.
She was satisfied.
“I have to confess that I’ve been mistaken for someone else, too,” Han said. “The actor Constance Wu.”
“She was in Crazy Rich Asians!” Mary said. “Loved that movie. There’s definitely an uncanny resemblance. In fact, when you pulled up, I thought you were Constance Wu!”
The women laughed.
“I’ll be on my way now,” Han said. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”
“No worries,” Mary said. “Before you go, may I ask you something?”
“Sure,” Han said.
“Why did you drive so far to a place with no connection to May McAllister and her son?”
“You’ll think I’m insane when I tell you,” Han said, “but the address came to me in a dream.”
“I don’t think you’re insane,” Mary said.
“May I ask a favor?” Han said.
“Of course.”
“Please don’t tell anyone I was here.”
“My lips are sealed.”
“Again, I’m sorry for the disturbance. This looks like a lovely and peaceful place.”
“It is.”
“Take good care,” the reporter said.
“You, too,” Mary said as Han drove off.
THE END
December 11, 2020
My Dad and Airplanes
Author's Note: I wrote this eight years ago, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of my father's death. Like his memory, it has withstood the test of time. I have slightly updated it for today, December 11, 2020, the 18th anniversary of his death. Read the original here.
Roger L. Miller as a boy, early 1920s.
My Dad and Airplanesby G. Wayne Miller
I live near an airport. Depending on wind direction and other variables, planes sometimes pass directly over my house as they climb into the sky. If I’m outside, I always look up, marveling at the wonder of flight. I’ve witnessed many amazing developments -- the end of the Cold War, the advent of the digital world, for example -- but except perhaps for space travel, which of course is rooted at Kitty Hawk, none can compare.
I also always think of my father, Roger L. Miller, who died 18 years ago today.
Dad was a boy on May 20, 1927, when Charles Lindbergh took off in a single-engine plane from a field near New York City. Thirty-three-and-a-half hours later, he landed in Paris. That boy from a small Massachusetts town who became my father was astounded, like people all over the world. Lindbergh’s pioneering Atlantic crossing inspired him to get into aviation, and he wanted to do big things, maybe captain a plane or even head an airline. But the Great Depression, which forced him from college, diminished that dream. He drove a school bus to pay for trade school, where he became an airplane mechanic, which was his job as a wartime Navy enlisted man and during his entire civilian career. On this modest salary, he and my mother raised a family, sacrificing material things they surely desired.
My father was a smart and gentle man, not prone to harsh judgment, fond of a joke, a lover of newspapers and gardening and birds, chickadees especially. He was robust until a stroke in his 80s sent him to a nursing home, but I never heard him complain during those final, decrepit years. The last time I saw him conscious, he was reading his beloved Boston Globe, his old reading glasses uneven on his nose, from a hospital bed. The morning sun was shining through the window and for a moment, I held the unrealistic hope that he would make it through this latest distress. He died four days later, quietly, I am told. I was not there.
Like others who have lost loved ones, there are conversations I never had with my Dad that I probably should have. But near the end, we did say we loved each other, which was rare (he was, after all, a Yankee). I smoothed his brow and kissed him goodbye.
So on this 18th anniversary, I have no deep regrets. But I do have two impossible wishes.
My first is that Dad could have heard my eulogy, which I began writing that morning by his hospital bed. It spoke of quiet wisdom he imparted to his children, and of the respect and affection family and others held for him. In his modest way, he would have liked to hear it, I bet, for such praise was scarce when he was alive. But that is not how the story goes. We die and leave only memories, a strictly one-way experience.
My second wish would be to tell Dad how his only son has fared in the last 18 years. I know he would have empathy for some bad times I went through and be proud that I made it. He would be happy that I found a woman I love, Yolanda, my wife now for four years and my best friend for more than a decade: someone, like him, who loves gardening and birds. He would be pleased that my three wonderful children, Rachel, Katy and Cal, are making their way in the world; and that he now has three great-granddaughters, Bella, Livvie and Viv, wonderful girls all. In his humble way, he would be honored to know how frequently I, my sister Mary Lynne and my children remember and miss him. He would be saddened to learn that my other sister, his younger daughter, Lynda, died in 2015. But that is not how the story goes, either. We send thoughts to the dead, but the experience is one-way. We treasure photographs, but they do not speak.
Lately, I have been poring through boxes of black-and-white prints handed down from Dad’s side of my family. I am lucky to have them, more so that they were taken in the pre-digital age -- for I can touch them, as the people captured in them surely themselves did so long ago. I can imagine what they might say, if in fact they could speak.
Some of the scenes are unfamiliar to me: sailboats on a bay, a stream in winter, a couple posing on a hill, the woman dressed in fur-trimmed coat. But I recognize the house, which my grandfather, for whom I am named, built with his farmer’s hands; the coal stove that still heated the kitchen when I visited as a child; the birdhouses and flower gardens, which my sweet grandmother lovingly tended. I recognize my father, my uncle and my aunts, just children then in the 1920s. I peer at Dad in these portraits (he seems always to be smiling!), and the resemblance to photos of me at that age is startling, though I suppose it should not be.
A plane will fly over my house today, I am certain. When it does, I will go outside and think of young Dad, amazed that someone had taken the controls of an airplane in America and stepped out in France. A boy with a smile, his life all ahead of him.
My dad, second from top, with two of his sisters and his brother.October 25, 2020
John Lennon joins Jack Nicholson in a fictionalized appearance in Blue Hill! Read this excerpt.
Along with several fictional characters, starting with the narrator, "Blue Hill" features some real-life people -- Jack Nicholson, for example, albeit in fictionalized form.
And now, enter John Lennon (and Yoko and Sean). As with much of the novel, this scene is woven into the larger story of narrator/protagonist Mark Gray and first love Sally Martin.
To learn more about the book, which published on October 6 - and to order in audio, Kindle or paper formats - visit http://www.gwaynemiller.com/books.htm
By senior year, I was pretty damn cocky.
I’d directed six films, and one had been favorably reviewed in The Village Voice and another praised in a wrap-up of student artists in The New York Times. I’d been contacted by a couple of New York ad firms regarding employment after graduation, but I’d told them to take a hike. I was an artist—so said The Times—not a corporate suit. Bud was heading to L.A. and I was going with him and Sally was going, too…or so she believed.
I can’t pinpoint when I became derisive of the woman for whom I’d sold the only thing of material value my mother had left me.
I suspect it was after September, when I declined to live with her, using some pathetically lame argument about space and freedom, and I know for certain it was before she got knocked up. My guess is late October. I was running the first annual NYU Jack Nicholson film fest and on this particular night we’d screened Cuckoo’s Nest for a sellout audience of 300, including John Lennon—John Lennon!—who’d arrived, unannounced, with Yoko and Sean.
During the discussion period, which I moderated, Sally raised her hand and said: “If Chief could talk all that time, why’d he wait so long to say something?”
Utter silence in the auditorium.
Bud rolled his eyes and The Voice’s film critic looked pained and if Lennon hadn’t been fussing over his son, I bet he would have had some sharp-tongued barb.
I did not let on that I knew Sally.
“Thank you, Miss,” I said, “now would anyone care to pick up on Professor Pagliano’s observations on Nurse Ratched as a metaphor for neo-capitalist authoritarianism?”
Lennon did, and his remarks were printed in the next edition of The Village Voice, along with a photo of me handing him the mic.
Later that evening, alone with Sally, I said: “If you have to be so stupid, can you at least not do it in public?”
“Why was that stupid?” Sally said.
“Oh my God,” I said, with blustering intellectual indignation, “now you want me to explain your stupidity. It’s like the Bunuel subtitles again.”
`Well, I hate subtitles,” Sally said. “If I want to read, I’ll get a book.”
She had a point, a good one in fact, but I didn’t see it then. There was a lot I didn’t see then.
If I hadn’t gone home that Christmas, I suppose our relationship would have been over, finally, by year’s end. But I did go home, and Sally did too, and Christmas Eve found us together and it was like the calendar had been turned back.
I told Sally I loved her and somehow we’d make things work and we should consider tonight a fresh start—all the sweet talk a twenty-one-year-old guy who hasn’t been laid in a month can muster. We made love that night, and every night for the remainder of the holidays, and we went back to New York together, and several weeks later, when Doris Wong began strongly hinting that my day was soon to come, I told Sally it was over—this time, for good.
She didn’t plead.
She didn’t ask for explanations and she didn’t call or come by, and when two weeks had passed and Doris hadn’t moved past hinting, I called her.
She didn’t want to talk over the phone.
“Meet me at Rockefeller Center,” she said, and hung up.
The funny thing was, the second I saw Sally, I wanted to kiss her.
Go figure—I can’t wait for her to be out of my life and once she is, all I can think is I want to kiss her. Kiss her and take her clothes off and spend a week in bed with her. Like Yoko and John, except no peace-in, but sex non-stop.
I swear, no one had ever looked better: her lips redder than I remembered, her hair so long and silky and brown, her skin so rosy. I mean, she was like Barbara Hershey, another actress I had a thing for then. And I did kiss her—this clumsy thing involving contact with her cheek. We exchanged pleasantries and then we skated and after, as we drank hot chocolates, she told me she was two months pregnant. Given how we’d spent the holiday – together virtually 24/7 – there was no shred of doubt about paternity.
More "Blue Hill: posts:
-- On a return to a hometown, a reunion with a first love.
On the run from the law and deep into his journey into the past, Mark Gray, the protagonist of "Blue Hill," returns to his home town, where he meets Sally Martin, his high-school girlfriend and first love. A long-buried secret will soon be revealed.
READ REVIEWS:
https://gwaynemiller.blogspot.com/2020/10/reviews-for-blue-hill-are-coming-in-and.html
-- Fenway Park on August 18, 1967: Tony Conigliaro struck by pitch.
Mark Gray, the protagonist of "Blue Hill," is a young Red Sox fan when slugger Tony Conigliaro is beaned by a pitch during the Sox "Dream Team" of 1967. The pitch changed the real-life Tony C. -- and had a profound impact on the fictional protagonist of my new novel.
READ THIS EXCERPT:
https://gwaynemiller.blogspot.com/2020/10/fenway-park-on-august-18-1967-tony.html
-- The possibility of reconciliation, and an outrageous climb in a Maine Nor'easter.
Mark Gray, the protagonist of "Blue Hill," is the son of a now-retired Episcopal priest and '60s social activist. Their relationship has been difficult since Gray's childhood, but there is always the possibility of reconciliation. Maybe it will occur when Gray, now one of America's Most Wanted criminals, visits his elderly father, who lives in Blue Hill, Gray's hometown, and proposes an outrageous climb of a favorite mountain... in a raging Nor'easter. Read the excerpt here.
READ THIS EXCERPT:
https://gwaynemiller.blogspot.com/2020/10/mark-gray-protagonist-of-blue-hill-is.html
-- Quite a cast of characters.
Along with several fictional characters, starting with the narrator, "Blue Hill" features some real-life people -- Jack Nicholson, for example, albeit in fictionalized form.
READ THIS EXCERPT:
https://gwaynemiller.blogspot.com/2020/10/quite-cast-of-characters-another.html
-- Fenway Park.
Baseball is a central theme of my new novel, "Blue Hill," a departure from my other fiction, which has been solidly in the mystery, horror and sci-fi genres.
READ THE EXCERPT:
https://gwaynemiller.blogspot.com/2020/10/blue-hill-excerpt-from-chapter-four.html
-- Listen to the books!
Listen to a clip from the audio version of “Blue Hill” Blue Hill and also some of my other books, including “Thunder Rise,” King of Hearts,” and “The Work of Human Hands.”
LISTEN:
https://gwaynemiller.blogspot.com/2020/09/listen-to-books.html
October 16, 2020
Updated on Nov. 14, 2020: Reviews for Blue Hill keep coming in and they are raves!
The reviews for my latest book, "Blue Hill," a novel that is a profound departure from my other (mostly horror, mystery and sci-fi) fiction are looking good! I will post more as they arrive.
To learn more about the book and to order in audio, Kindle, paper or Apple formats, visit http://www.gwaynemiller.com/books.htm
"Imagine having it all, when suddenly everything changes…. Set in the late 1990s, G. Wayne Miller’s latest page turner, ‘Blue Hill’, is a gripping tale wrapped in nostalgia ultimately revealing what matters most in this life.
-- Brendan Kirby, co-host of WPRI/12/CBS' popular program, The Rhode Show. WATCH the interview.
*****
"Versatile writer G. Wayne Miller returns with his newest book, a captivating thriller, 'Blue Hill.' "
-- John Busbee, The Culture Buzz, KFMG 98.9 FM, Des Moines, Iowa.
*****
“A bold and bracing tale that challenges our perspective and sensibility, as it confronts us with the fact that reality is a relative term...
“While the setup is pure Harlan Coben or Joe Finder, the execution is more akin to Tom Wolfe’s farcical approach in ‘The Bonfire of the Vanities.’ At times, that leads to rapid shifts in tone — from potential thriller to a kind of parody — which works, thanks to Miller’s elegant command of his story.”
-- Providence Journal, November 1, 2020. Read the full review online:
*****
"Blue Hill” is a story of seduction by a time and a technology, a painful story of narcissism, compromise, and redemption. G. Wayne Miller helps us to see ourselves as we are, not as who we want to be, and to see a time (1997) and a culture for what it was. In this hard-to-put-down novel, G. Wayne Miller helps us understand who we become – and even better, who we might be if we take the time to think, look at ourselves in the mirror, and remember what matters.
-- Michael Fine, podcaster and best-selling author of “Abundance,” “Health Care Revolt” and, due in November 2020, “The Bull and Other Stories.”
*****
A great read.
-- Bill Reynolds, author of "Fall River Dreams: A Team's Quest for Glory, A Town's Search for Its Soul"
*****
The highly creative and motivated forty-two-year-old Mark Gray yearns for something new even though he is a celebrated gamer with a loving wife and child. He feels his life has gotten quite repetitive and mundane, which leads him to a fling gone wrong with a beautiful female fan and an embarrassing fall from grace. Gray, the rich and successful family man, becomes a fugitive on the run from an attempted murder and felony assault charge. Will Gray prove his innocence before everybody, including his beloved wife and child, completely turns on him? G. Wayne Miller brings us Blue Hill, a riveting story set in 1997 about a man's journey through the fondest and most painful memories of his past and the secrets he discovers as he flees from the law.
My first thought after reading Blue Hill was: "I love this book!" G. Wayne Miller's story has opened the door to other enticing titles by him that I would definitely love to read. Blue Hill is simply beautiful! The first-person point of view is brilliantly executed, giving readers a close and personal look into the story. I felt the emotions of the protagonist as if I was experiencing these myself. The attention to detail and meticulousness displayed in the portrayal of the characters makes the novel so realistic and captivating. Wayne Miller mixes a laugh-out-loud funny tale with a deep and serious narrative, and the result is a book that will capture your emotions and leave a lasting, distinctive impression.
-- Foluso Falaye, Readers' Favorite
*****
In Blue Hill, You Can Go Home Again.
Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2020
Verified Purchase
Everyone makes mistakes. Some of us make really big mistakes sometimes because we believe our own headlines. In the book Blue Hill by G. Wayne Miller, Mark Gray makes one of those big mistakes and finds that what matters most in our short lives is how we deal with repairing the damage we've caused and reconciling the battle between good and evil that lurks in each of us.
While this novel was largely written in the late 90s, it reads fresh and vital. And who won't like a book that takes us back to floppy discs, AOL, chat rooms, big, bulky cell phones and even the 1967 Boston Red Sox with a special emphasis on the great Tony Conigliaro.
I give Blue Hill a hearty recommendation. It's a great read that I couldn't put down.
-- Dante, Amazon reviewer
*****
More Blue Hill: posts:
-- On a return to a hometown, a reunion with a first love.
On the run from the law and deep into his journey into the past, Mark Gray, the protagonist of "Blue Hill," returns to his home town, where he meets Sally Martin, his high-school girlfriend and first love. A long-buried secret will soon be revealed.
Reviews for Blue Hill keep coming in and they are raves!
The reviews for my latest book, "Blue Hill," a novel that is a profound departure from my other (mostly horror, mystery and sci-fi) fiction are looking good! I will post more as they arrived.
To learn more about the book, which published on October 6 - and to order in audio, Kindle or paper formats - visit http://www.gwaynemiller.com/books.htm
“A bold and bracing tale that challenges our perspective and sensibility, as it confronts us with the fact that reality is a relative term...
“While the setup is pure Harlan Coben or Joe Finder, the execution is more akin to Tom Wolfe’s farcical approach in ‘The Bonfire of the Vanities.’ At times, that leads to rapid shifts in tone — from potential thriller to a kind of parody — which works, thanks to Miller’s elegant command of his story.”
-- Providence Journal, November 1, 2020. Read the full review online:
*****
"Blue Hill” is a story of seduction by a time and a technology, a painful story of narcissism, compromise, and redemption. G. Wayne Miller helps us to see ourselves as we are, not as who we want to be, and to see a time (1997) and a culture for what it was. In this hard-to-put-down novel, G. Wayne Miller helps us understand who we become – and even better, who we might be if we take the time to think, look at ourselves in the mirror, and remember what matters.
-- Michael Fine, podcaster and best-selling author of “Abundance,” “Health Care Revolt” and, due in November 2020, “The Bull and Other Stories.”
*****
A great read.
-- Bill Reynolds, author of "Fall River Dreams: A Team's Quest for Glory, A Town's Search for Its Soul"
*****
The highly creative and motivated forty-two-year-old Mark Gray yearns for something new even though he is a celebrated gamer with a loving wife and child. He feels his life has gotten quite repetitive and mundane, which leads him to a fling gone wrong with a beautiful female fan and an embarrassing fall from grace. Gray, the rich and successful family man, becomes a fugitive on the run from an attempted murder and felony assault charge. Will Gray prove his innocence before everybody, including his beloved wife and child, completely turns on him? G. Wayne Miller brings us Blue Hill, a riveting story set in 1997 about a man's journey through the fondest and most painful memories of his past and the secrets he discovers as he flees from the law.
My first thought after reading Blue Hill was: "I love this book!" G. Wayne Miller's story has opened the door to other enticing titles by him that I would definitely love to read. Blue Hill is simply beautiful! The first-person point of view is brilliantly executed, giving readers a close and personal look into the story. I felt the emotions of the protagonist as if I was experiencing these myself. The attention to detail and meticulousness displayed in the portrayal of the characters makes the novel so realistic and captivating. Wayne Miller mixes a laugh-out-loud funny tale with a deep and serious narrative, and the result is a book that will capture your emotions and leave a lasting, distinctive impression.
-- Foluso Falaye, Readers' Favorite
*****
In Blue Hill, You Can Go Home Again.
Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2020
Verified Purchase
Everyone makes mistakes. Some of us make really big mistakes sometimes because we believe our own headlines. In the book Blue Hill by G. Wayne Miller, Mark Gray makes one of those big mistakes and finds that what matters most in our short lives is how we deal with repairing the damage we've caused and reconciling the battle between good and evil that lurks in each of us.
While this novel was largely written in the late 90s, it reads fresh and vital. And who won't like a book that takes us back to floppy discs, AOL, chat rooms, big, bulky cell phones and even the 1967 Boston Red Sox with a special emphasis on the great Tony Conigliaro.
I give Blue Hill a hearty recommendation. It's a great read that I couldn't put down.
-- Dante, Amazon reviewer
*****
More Blue Hill: posts:
-- On a return to a hometown, a reunion with a first love.
On the run from the law and deep into his journey into the past, Mark Gray, the protagonist of "Blue Hill," returns to his home town, where he meets Sally Martin, his high-school girlfriend and first love. A long-buried secret will soon be revealed.
Reviews for Blue Hill are coming in and they are favorable!
The reviews for my latest book, "Blue Hill," a novel that is a profound departure from my other (mostly horror, mystery and sci-fi) fiction are looking good! I will post more as they arrived.
To learn more about the book, which published on October 6 - and to order in audio, Kindle or paper formats - visit http://www.gwaynemiller.com/books.htm
“Blue Hill” is a story of seduction by a time and a technology, a painful story of narcissism, compromise, and redemption. G. Wayne Miller helps us to see ourselves as we are, not as who we want to be, and to see a time (1997) and a culture for what it was. In this hard-to-put-down novel, G. Wayne Miller helps us understand who we become – and even better, who we might be if we take the time to think, look at ourselves in the mirror, and remember what matters.
-- Michael Fine, podcaster and best-selling author of “Abundance,” “Health Care Revolt” and, due in November 2020, “The Bull and Other Stories.”
The highly creative and motivated forty-two-year-old Mark Gray yearns for something new even though he is a celebrated gamer with a loving wife and child. He feels his life has gotten quite repetitive and mundane, which leads him to a fling gone wrong with a beautiful female fan and an embarrassing fall from grace. Gray, the rich and successful family man, becomes a fugitive on the run from an attempted murder and felony assault charge. Will Gray prove his innocence before everybody, including his beloved wife and child, completely turns on him? G. Wayne Miller brings us Blue Hill, a riveting story set in 1997 about a man's journey through the fondest and most painful memories of his past and the secrets he discovers as he flees from the law.
My first thought after reading Blue Hill was: "I love this book!" G. Wayne Miller's story has opened the door to other enticing titles by him that I would definitely love to read. Blue Hill is simply beautiful! The first-person point of view is brilliantly executed, giving readers a close and personal look into the story. I felt the emotions of the protagonist as if I was experiencing these myself. The attention to detail and meticulousness displayed in the portrayal of the characters makes the novel so realistic and captivating. Wayne Miller mixes a laugh-out-loud funny tale with a deep and serious narrative, and the result is a book that will capture your emotions and leave a lasting, distinctive impression.
-- Foluso Falaye, Readers' Favorite
In Blue Hill, You Can Go Home Again.
Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2020
Verified Purchase
Everyone makes mistakes. Some of us make really big mistakes sometimes because we believe our own headlines. In the book Blue Hill by G. Wayne Miller, Mark Gray makes one of those big mistakes and finds that what matters most in our short lives is how we deal with repairing the damage we've caused and reconciling the battle between good and evil that lurks in each of us.
While this novel was largely written in the late 90s, it reads fresh and vital. And who won't like a book that takes us back to floppy discs, AOL, chat rooms, big, bulky cell phones and even the 1967 Boston Red Sox with a special emphasis on the great Tony Conigliaro.
I give Blue Hill a hearty recommendation. It's a great read that I couldn't put down.
-- Dante, Amazon reviewer
More "Blue Hill: posts:
-- On a return to a hometown, a reunion with a first love.
On the run from the law and deep into his journey into the past, Mark Gray, the protagonist of "Blue Hill," returns to his home town, where he meets Sally Martin, his high-school girlfriend and first love. A long-buried secret will soon be revealed.
