About the Book
Spirit Falls, the first novel in the Long War series, is a coming-of-age novel set in the late 1950's on the empty and hardscrabble borderland between Michigan's Upper Peninsula and northern Wisconsin. Ricky Belisle is a boy born to first-generation Americans who have migrated north to farm and hold land that cannot be taken away from them. They bring with them the beliefs, manners and stories of the homeland that they have not occupied and in so doing they create a disconnect in Ricky that forces him to begin the exploration that will eventually take him away from the land that has leached into his bones, that has given him the foundation for how he sees the world. Marie Jeanne Charbonneau, "M.J.," a French-Canadian tomboy, is his best, his only, friend, who shows Ricky that the world is wider than he thinks and that much of life takes place in the space between the words. Their relationship sparks the hunt for truth within themselves. The gypsy-like refugee Marina Svetaeva, green-eyed, black-haired, beautiful and wounded, a fragment of war-torn Europe, arrives like a visitation of the spirit world. Her arrival is the beginning of Ricky's journey. Ricky Belisle, Marie Jeanne Charbonneau and Marina find themselves on the eve of the winter solstice, the coldest, longest night of the year, set on a course that will last until the spring thaw brings with it a cascade of events that ends with Ricky carrying M.J. in his arms across the Great Bogus Swamp into the teeth of a 100 year Lake Superior storm. He wants only for her to survive this catastrophe and for him to find what it means to be a man. Ricky identifies with the land, the source of his strengths and weaknesses, requiring of him those things that he would not require of himself. He must learn to live with his fear of its darkness, to manage a homeland both harsh and sublime, and learn to leave behind the place both familiar and brutal. Ricky's struggle is to sort out what role women play in his life, how an honorable man treats those who are weaker, and how a young mans knows truth--by what he is told or by what he feels.
About the Author :
Townsend comes from a long line--father, grandfathers and great-grandfathers--of soldiers, American and pre-American. Slavic on his mother's, deep-south redneck on the father's side, his parents managed money poorly and told stories well. Spare, pithy, lasting the duration of a Pall Mall cigarette, the tales were to entertain while teaching. No one is completely useless, he was told. He can always serve as a bad example. He learned this lesson--storytellers are treasured, liars are vexing and both are so often one and the same. The craft is shared; the objectives differ. However, when the skilled liar is armed, crazed and planning Armageddon, ambiguity in matters of war and peace and life and death have vexed the earth. His stories and novels arise from family history, fables and stories told around the kitchen table as well as his own experiences in America's late 20th century ambiguous wars, deceptions and counter-deceptions. Fluent in Russian and German with a combat vocabulary in French, Townsend is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin (BA), studied at Freies Universitat Berlin (Certifikat), and received and MA from Georgetown University. Since leaving the intelligence business, he has turned his attention to writing stories and essays, an early passion waylaid by life and work. The Long War is a novel series addressing deception, war and peace in the 20th century world of both contrived and actual moral ambiguity. In 1947, the Soviet security services named the United States as 'the main enemy.' The Cold War was joined. Four teens, born half-worlds apart, children of their nations' greatest generation, come of age in the 1950s, each in their small-town Eden, cast out to encounter one another on the front lines in the war for control of the imagination. He follows four main characters: Two Russians; Danton Larionov and Ekaterina Soroka, one American; Richard Belisle, and a Canadian; Marie Jeanne Charbonneau. These four cross paths, destinies, and swords as they stalk, deceive and love across the world. They trust and double-cross one another, fast friends and bitter enemies, give faith and deceive while striving to live in accordance within their moral codes in an amoral world. Townsend and his wife, Patrice Naparstek, have lived comfortably most anywhere--Rovinj, Croatia; Dresden, Germany; Dubai, UAE; Boulder, Colorado; Madison, Wisconsin--returning periodically to his family farm in northern Wisconsin to breathe deeply.
