Alpha and Omega

It's bizarre how sometimes a crisis can turn into something productive and worthwhile. I mention this because ten years ago I had a medical setback, a crisis, and something good came out of it. My cancer surgery and convalescence as I was sitting home alone during long, winter days, spurred me to do something I had put off for over forty years: I sat down at my computer and began writing a novel that had been repressed in my thoughts since my youth. Three years later, I had a 108,000-word manuscript that soon became a published novel, Purcell Station.

Over the next few years, I had fun going to book signings, and speaking to book clubs, and hearing from people all over the country who had read the book. It was exhilarating talking with people who had grown up in Knox County, Indiana, who read the book and talked about how it brought back so many happy memories. I was often asked when I was going to write another one, and my semi-serious response was, "I said everything I knew in this one. I have nothing else to say."

      Well, I was wrong. Another crisis came along: the pandemic. Finding myself in a similar situation, cooped up in the house, limited by isolating in place, I realized I did have something else to say. In my recluse, I recalled an old dance hall/speakeasy my father showed me down on the banks of the Wabash River. He told me how it was once a thriving operation during Prohibition and the Great Depression, and all the stuff that was reputed to have gone on there.

As I remembered it, I felt it told a lot of stories, so I endeavored to find out what they were. And that is the genesis of my new novel, Mystic Nights of the Wabash.

     So, there you have the story behind the story, the beginning, the alpha.  You will have to read the book to discover the omega.  Happy reading!