| ISBN 9780976547983 5.5 x 8.5 inches 190 pages Perfectbound: $17. list For you: $10 plus shipping, $3 per item Purchase Order? |
Marine Corps veteran Donald Keyshot has recently and unfairly been forced from his job as a successful high school counselor. He now serves in private practice. He has made an odd and unsatisfying marriage with Mitzi--jealous, beautiful, ambitious, confused, and also recently fired from her own job as a television anchor. Attacked on his front porch by an unknown assailant and hospitalized, Don must now recover from a variety of wounds and discover if his relationships with Courier journalist Bellona Shaw, ex-Marine Corps buddy Nim Chaud, young client Thuy Le, and his new dog Lamont might help him heal body and soul. The search for his mysterious attacker is more-or-less aided by Balona's still-unlicensed private eye Joseph Oliver Kuhl.
NOTE: A Perched-in Soul has a good many young characters and the story is easily accessible by competent teen readers, but the story is not "teen-oriented." It was designed for older teen and grown-up sensibilities.
Here is a scene from A Perched-in Soul. Don Keyshot has taken a group of young people on a “career exploration” visit to the Delta City Animal Shelter where he suddenly decides he needs to adopt one of the animals, an older, sad-looking dog.
Old Lemon groaned, marched back to his corner and sat, his back turned to me. The message was powerful.
"Does this dog have all the shots he needs?"
Mrs. Fern Earwick responded officially, "All our animals must have their shots, y'know, before we can let them go with an adoptor. We administer all the necessary shots right here on premises. And they must be spayed or neutered." She squinched her eyes. "The animals, I mean!"
Old Lemon turned only his head from the corner, looked back at me, eyebrows raised again.
"I might be able to take him for a while, on trial."
"Oh, no. You have to decide right now, once and for all. We can't have animals coming and going like that."
Old Lemon returned, sat looking at Mrs. Earwick and me. His gaze reminded me suddenly of the intense long brown stare of Lance Corporal Asher Bernstein watching for jungle dangers. Bootsie pulled on my fingers and Gerry pleaded for Old Lemon's life. Even Fordy Fairlane observed that it looked like a "clean dog" to him. The keeper almost smiled. Old Lemon almost smiled, eyebrows up.
"Okay. Let's do it." And the keeper brought Old Lemon--now Lamont--out at once for his shots and for the trip home. He sat in the front seat on the way back to Balona, between Fordy Fairlane and me, Fordy driving, of course. We secured Lamont with the seatbelt. All the way back he leaned his weight against me, looking at my face occasionally and smiling. Fordy whistled "Go Baloney." Gerry looked out the window at the rain. Bootsie and Dirk both cried.
I asked, "Why are you crying, Beauty Jean?"
She said, "I'm thinking about all the dead animals in the world."
"Ah, well. There are lots of little baby animals, too, growing up healthy and well taken-care-of."
"I'm not thinking about them. I'm thinking about the dead ones."
"Ah, well. And why are you crying, Dirk?"
"I'm hungry."
I thought about Bootsie's and Dirk's concerns and about Lamont's intense gaze and about 30-years-dead “Ace” Bernstein and the transmigration of souls and whether that belief might have some validity in this Twenty-first Century. I should have died 30 years ago. I wondered if I were destined to die soon.
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