A corporate executive and family man is targeted by an amoral material girl and her uber-feminist mentor.
In 1983, in moss-hung Verona, Georgia, the tender and tenacious love between a hardworking man and his adoring wife is tested by sudden adversity. At thirty-two, Troy Stevenson is a corporate vice-president and a former college football star who must confront an old family secret that underlies his nascent alcohol abuse or he may lose his wife and the son and daughter he deeply loves. When his latent destructiveness is unleashed and impacts his family, he moves to their lakeside cottage to come to grips with his personal weaknesses. But busybodies at his company assume he moved to the cottage because his marriage is in trouble. Encouraged by the assumption, co-worker Brooke Emerson, an amoral, 1980s material girl romantically obsessed with Troy, begins to stalk him....
Excerpt
Verona, Georgia
Spring 1983
The information printed on the fanfolded paper was offensive and Troy Stevenson, Vice President of Marketing and Sales at Shearwater-Ingram Company, was highly offended. It also held a riddle that added discombobulation to offendedness.
He jogged the edges, attempting to neaten the stack, and started to flip through the pages again when he heard muffled footsteps on the carpet. He glanced up and saw Max Ingram, Director of Human Resources, strolling through the door.
“Chow time,” Max said, tapping his wristwatch. “Let’s go eat.”
“I’m busy.”
“Well, take a break. I want us to stop by HR on the way so you can meet the new EFO director.”
“UFO director?” Troy said with mock perplexity. “Oh, you mean the sexual harassment lady.”
Max smiled wryly. “Better not let her hear you call her a lady. She’ll sue your butt.”
Troy didn’t return the smile and a faint line appeared between his eyebrows.
“What?” Max said.
“Last quarter’s preliminary sales report.” Troy tapped the printout with a forefinger. “Down three and a half percent.”
Max shrugged. “So? Nothing goes up forever.”
He drummed a rhythm on the edge of Troy’s desk and sang, “What goes up, must come down—”
“Cut it out. David Clayton Thomas you ain’t.”
Both men had lived on Georgia’s coastal plain long enough to have picked up the liquid drawl indigenous to the area, but it was an overlay and their native vocabularies and accents frequently punched through—Max’s the rapid mumble of Birmingham, Alabama, Troy’s the hill-country dialect of eastern Tennessee.
The bantering eased off and a hint of concern crept into Troy’s tone. “This is the first time sales have gone down since I took over marketing. I’ve got to figure out why.”
“For cryin’ out loud, you can leave it for half an hour.”
Troy ignored him. His long fingers worked the keys of his adding machine. He tore off the tape and compared it to the tiny figures on the printout.
“It’ll be another ten, fifteen minutes before I get to a stopping place. If that’s too long, go on ahead and I’ll catch up with you. Otherwise, sit down and shut up.”
Max knew from long experience, going back to the early days of their friendship in college, that Troy had a stubborn streak and challenging it was futile. Without further discussion, he dropped into a wingback chair in front of the desk.
Bored and annoyed, he glanced around the slate green walls. There was nothing here to relieve his boredom, nothing he had not seen a hundred times before—framed actions shots of Troy as an All-American halfback for the Alabama Crimson Tide, his university degrees in modest document frames, portraits of his wife and kids....
Max shifted in the chair and picked microscopic lint off his suit. Propping his ankle on his knee, he jiggled his foot, glanced at his watch and yawned theatrically.
Hearts of Gold
Synopsis
by
Frank P. Whyte
Portland, Oregon is known as the City of Roses. Of course that’s an odd name for a city whose mere mention conjures images of driving winds and torrential ra
Major League ballplayer Justin Moore is kidnapped from his own ballpark and transported to a foreign land. It might take high-level international negotiations to free him. Or maybe he will take matters into his own hands.
South Baltimore serves as the backdrop for this gripping story of three brothers leading very different lives but joined forever by the secrets of a painful family past.
