Shawn Turk flees his bible-thumping hometown girlfriend only to fall for another Christian, this one named after his new city. But Tacoma is different - she writes her own rules, and her beliefs don't preclude adventurous sex and agnostic boyfriends. Until the night she tries to pull a foxhole conversion, and sends Shawn walking across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge at midnight, holding a copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. A provocative religious romance from the author of the best-selling atheist novel The Popcorn Girl. “Vaughn takes normal human beings and emotions and makes them extraordinary and profound… A living writer who is unlike anyone else.” --K. Calen "Vaughn writes with a wit, tenderness, cerebral intensity and outright raunchy humor which fast becomes addictive." --CSLowe
Michael J. Vaughn is the author of 29 novels, including Punks for the Opera and Mermaids' Tears. He is also a fine arts painter, and drummer/vocalist for San Jose's El Camino Revival Band.
Why did it end this way? Was hard for this old lady of 75 to keep up with, but still I couldn't put it down! Reminds me of how my young husband's life must have been in the years between when we 1st met, he, 9, and me, 30, married with 2 daughters, 3rd on the way. And when we met again, me 69 and he 49. Long story, but we still love each other!
In typical Vaughn fashion, the book reads more as a stream-of-consciousness work, but not. Perhaps more accurately an amateur video recording of a not-at-all-special individual who has intriguing contacts? I'm really not versed enough in literary stylistics to try to characterize it; I only know I enjoy his style.
In this, I wonder whether Shawn is trying to tell us if you don't change you, your life never changes. I see no desire for anything more than the currently satisfying mix of day jobs and musical gigs, with some feminine company thrown in. Is Tacoma a catalyst?
As with most Vaughn I've read, I have no answers. I have no sense of what happens after the abrupt ending of the book, nor, frankly, curiosity.
And yet I can't seem to stop reading every time I find another.