Young Jason Brindle sees an odd light in the tunnel of his model railway. Suddenly he realizes that he has been transported from the year 2017 to 1862 in the midst of the Cotton Famine where desperate families are surviving on a couple of potatoes or onions a day, with no electricity, and horse-drawn transport; a world he could hardly have imagined. In the important industrial town of Blackburn, he sees how families and communities supported and cared for each other. With no money, few clothes and not knowing a soul, he meets a struggling but charming family and spends several days with a vicar and his family. He forms a fond relationship with a cheeky charming girl of his own age and has amazing adventures, including a train crash and a riot. He soon makes friends, but how will he get home?
This is the second book and first fictional novel for the author. While specific characters in the novel are fictional, some scenes that are descripted occur fictionally in places that once existed and some places in the novel still exist. They play a major role in telling a gripping story that can and could occur. Richard Wayne Hatley had lived and worked in some of those places. He has known some of the people that are like some of the characters in this novel. There are no actual people depicted in this book with the exception of people that are mentioned from a historical basis. There are references to events that may and did occur in the time frame of the novel. There are no attempts to document any reasons for any other than the occurrence of those events. The characters depicted in this novel are fictional. They are not based on any person who ever existed. Any resemblance to a living person is unintended. This novel is written for the enjoyment of the reader and is neither an endorsement nor a criticism of any existing person, place, government, institution, or religion.
The story begins in the projects of the South Bronx, New York. There we will meet Sarah Williams, a single mother of twin girls Michelle and Miranda and son Jason. The Williams' family struggles to break the cycle of poverty in the face of gangs, drugs, and prostitution. Jason, the youngest attemtps to assert his role as "man of the house," but is overwhelmed by the task at hand. Thinking that he is just one more mouth to feed, he leaves in the middle of the night and begins his life on the streets of New York city. We follow Jason as he negotiates his new world. With the thought the he will some day be reunited with his family he makes clandestine visits to the project to see if Sarah and his sisters are still surviving. On one such visit he discovers that they have been driven from the apartment and their whereabouts are unknown. Desperate, alone, and hopeless, Jason decides to end his life in the cathedral for the homeless, Grand Central Station. Under a stairwell, hidden by the shadows, Jason lies dying as the blood drains from his body. He is alone in a horde of thousand of commuters. Rescued by his former basketball coach, his journey begins.
Praise for Gravity Drive: “I started reading Gravity Drive-Key to the Cosmos after dinner, figuring I'd get a couple chapters into it just to see how it started...and couldn't put it down. I read the whole thing straight through. Well done! I thoroughly enjoyed the story and the characters. I loved the aliens.” Jerry Oltion - Nebula Award winning author of over 15 novels and 150 published stories, including numerous Authorized Star Trek novels. Note-This is a work of fiction: Gravity Drive 2 - Jason's Ark continues where the first book, Gravity Drive - Key to the Cosmos ends. Well sort of. The story picks up from book one but it's about 6,000 years later. Humanity got it's act together, stopped the senseless wars between countries and cultures, and together healed the ecosystems of Earth. Amazing what you can accomplish when you stop hosting wars. OK...we're getting into SPOILER ALERT territory, so you've been warned. So there's this wandering black hole left over from when our Milky Way Galaxy ripped off another smaller Galaxy a really long time ago as it came cruising by, minding it's own business, but not paying attention to where it was going. That's what happens when you don't pay attention. That powerful little bugger really does a number on Earth and it's life when it comes looking for a bit of payback (not really of course. It's a black hole. It doesn't care. It's totally indifferent as is the rest of the Universe). Then, just when you think things are going to get better, WRONG. The Universe isn't done with us yet. Things get much worse for Earth. Mars is starting to look pretty nice though. Good time for a visit. Anyway, as things really start to go downhill, the hero from our first book (not Howard he's just a smart engineer, but our real hero) Jason, comes up with a plan to save the day (assuming a day is all eternity). This is the part where you look at the title of the book and go "Ahhhhhh, I get it." OK, I'm going to stop now because I really hate the idea of ruining the best parts of the story for you. I've done enough damage so please forgive me and I hope you enjoy reading book 2 as much as I enjoyed writing it. And thank you again for your excellent taste in authors. You readers are the best. Paul
Jason and Marceline have been friends since the end of seventh grade. Now in ninth grade, Jason's starting to think that they could be more than friends, and Marceline's starting to think so, too. But does the beginning of romance mean the end of their friendship?