In a poignant memoir, a freelance journalist describes growing up with her family on the grounds of an orphanage, where her father was the director and her mother served as a nurse, and her struggle to come to terms with her parents' need to share time and attention with the troubled orphans and her ultimate recognition of her own good fortune. 30,000 first printing
A collection of poetic observations on everything from the cosmic to everyday living. Includes some Sci-Fi poems, and at the back of the book, a few short stories for the readers enjoyment.
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Young Jackie Riddicks journey is haunted by the premature death of his father, the horrific abuse by his stepfather in Baltimore, and a harrowing escape to a small New Jersey town. Jackie is a promising athlete striving for hard-earned recognition. Like so many fatherless boys, his search for identity, knowledge, and acceptance is hindered by the absence of a positive role model. As Jackie develops into an outstanding athlete, his popularity soarsbut he becomes confused as he begins the transition to manhood. He desperately seeks the life skills essential to his quest, finding a mentor in his baseball coach, Osa Martin, a former star in the Negro Leagues. Coach Martin recognizes the great potential in his gifted athlete but also understands the turbulence and unrest causing problems in Jackies life. Jackie survives the turmoil of teenage life and the loss of his idol Buddy Holly, but adulthood brings a series of unexpected defeats and sorrows, overriding and crushing his youthful pleasures and joyfulness. From the hardscrabble hills of Appalachia to the inner cities of the northeast, Magic and Loss captures the changing times in America in the latter half of the twentieth century, depicting the social, economic, and political turbulence through the lives of one family struggling against overwhelming odds. Author John David Wells crafts an absorbing coming-of-age novel that portrays the spirit, innocence, and magic of an American generation growing up in the 1950s.
Love and betrayal take center stage as Jane Sweet becomes entangled with the kooky men in her life on the day of her mother's funeral. Jane's father, her three ex-husbands, Buddha, Blade and Salty, join Jane's current lover, Dick, and Ben Kola, successful Cape Scrod business man, America's Cup skipper and creep who forced himself on Jane when she was seventeen. Jane's long day is a minefield of bittersweet confrontations with her men and their eccentricities that is made even more compelling by the unexpected discovery of Ben Kola's body skewered to a tree by the shaft of a broken golf club. Redeeming and frightening, Kola's apparent murder propels Jane on a quest for the killer that reveals the meaning of truth and the lingering loyalties that exist among the eccentric Cape Scrod ghosts from her past.
Sometimes the truth hides where no one expects to find it.Joanne Weeks knows Baxter Jackson killed Linda—his second wife and Joanne’sbest friend—six years ago. But Baxter, a church elder and beloved member ofthe town, walks the streets a free man. The police tell Joanne to leave wellenough alone, but she is determined to bring him down. Using her skills as aprofessional skip tracer, she sets out to locate the only person who may be able to put Baxter behind bars. Melissa Harkoff was a traumatized sixteen-year-old foster child in the Jackson household when Linda disappeared. At the time Melissa claimed to know nothing of Linda's whereabouts—but was she lying? In relentless style, Deceit careens between Joanne's pursuit of the truth—which puts her own life in danger—and the events of six years' past, whenMelissa came to live with the Jacksons. What really happened in thathousehold? Beneath the veneer of perfection lies a story of shakeable faith,choices, and the lure of deceit.
