Announcing my first book: Dream House on Golan Drive, forthcoming from Signature Books (Salt Lake City) August 2015. It is the year 1972, and Riley Hartley finds that he, his family, community, and his faith are entirely indistinguishable from each other. He is eleven. A young woman named Lucy claims …
We leave Boston’s Logan determined to be self-directed, free. I’ll be damned if I am going to sit there for up to four days, we were told by surprisingly kind customer service representative at the other end of the airline’s “Need Help?” red phone. Cheryl had done all the talking …
Part 5 Robert Bly The man-boy not only knows all the lyrics of classic Rock and Roll songs, but the names of the musicians, the dates of most songs and the cultural milieu. It’s a walk through American history. How that is possible, I don’t know. This musical terrain is …
Back through the convenience store, I enter the Restaurant. The place is a abuzz with locals sitting at the counter, at tables and at perimeter booths one of which, apparently, is ours, dwarfing Cheryl who is sitting with a plastic menu the size of a motorcycle windshield. This is definitely …
Part 22 Ames Monument, WY We are on the way to Laramie, and C. wants to stop for the night, even though it’s not even the dinner hour. There is something about driving through Sherman, the highest point on I-80 at 8,262 feet above sea level that has triggered her …
Part 21 There is a frontiersman of sorts by the name of Wayne Baker who actually lives not far from where we are now, speeding towards Laramie. He’s one of the “Greatest Generation,” we’re told. In fact he’s happy to tell you that in so many words in a …
Part 23 Wayne Baker (right) And so it came to pass that while Derek hums “Come Together…right now…over me….” and C. does rear-view detail for vehicles coming up too fast from behind, I take the wheel and we set out across the mountain. I am Odysseus guiding our little …
Part 24 John and Sean Lennon North of Evanston, not far from Freedom Arms, my Grandfather Butler would have descended, as we now are, towards the last long stretch of the trail. Today, the road west—actually southwest—is calm, the drifts seemingly stilled by the persistence of the late-morning sun. This …
[Dear Blog Followers: As I get closer to sending this project off to an agent for possible publication, I have changed my wife’s name to “C.” and my grandson’s name to “Derek.” Thanks for reading…] Part 20 On to Wyoming. In truth this is not the first time C. …
Charlie Rose and Guest Part 19 These days I have kept my hands to myself, except on occasion when Joe is headed out the door to school and I give him an impromptu “priesthood blessing”—hand to the head and a few muttered Mormon words—or to pat him, as he pats …
