A storm begins. A journey unfolds. A love is tested.
Wounded and restless, Richard "Ricky" Belisle and Marie Jeanne Charbonneau leave behind their remote Lake Superior village-a place bounded by Life Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post, by the radio's flickering voices, by kitchen-table stories spun during long winter storms, and by the rare arrival of a visitor bearing news from the distant city. For generations, this insular world has shaped its children, giving them its silences, its rituals, its shared history of survival against a merciless landscape.
Marie Jeanne-M.J. to those who know her best-is younger than Ricky by a handful of months, but she carries within her a wisdom tempered by years of watchfulness. She believes meaning is not shouted in grand declarations but lived quietly through the rituals of daily life: a shared cup of coffee, a walk at dusk, the miracle of a birth, the solemnity of a burial. To her, the world is built in concentric rings-man and wife at the center, then family, then community, and, only after those are tended to, the nation beyond.
Ricky, however, cannot see it that way. For him, worthiness is measured not only in the eyes of his beloved M.J., nor in the warmth of his family's acceptance, but in the judgment of "them"-the men of his clan, his parish, his nation. To Ricky, life is a test, an arena where his worth must be proven again and again. Though most already consider him honorable, even noble, he feels the shadow of an old debt, a burden placed upon his parents for sins not entirely his own. To clear it, to redeem himself, he will endure exile, hardship, and sacrifice.
Had his priest been more perceptive-or perhaps better read-he might have offered Ricky the words of Augustine: "Lord, make me chaste, but not yet." Instead, Ricky sets out into the great unknown, driven by a hunger he cannot name, but which consumes him nonetheless.
It is 1960, the dawn of the nuclear age, a time when soldiering-the ancestral calling of the Belisle men-is no longer the path it once was. With the uniform of war denied to him, Ricky turns to the ballfield. Baseball becomes his battlefield, his discipline, his fragile sanctuary. Within the white chalk lines, the rules are firm, the order certain; outside, the world is riddled with hypocrisy, rage, and injustice. Across the American South and West, Ricky plays with grit and longing, his name whispered among the minor leagues even as temptation, corruption, and prejudice stalk his every step.
But fate is merciless. A collision at third base shatters more than his body; it nearly destroys his spirit. Jailed, injured, and cast adrift, Ricky finds himself broken and wandering, with only shadows for company.
And yet-on a remote Colorado mountain, battered but unbowed-he is found. Marie Jeanne, faithful through silence and separation, seeks him out once more. Together, they face a wilderness indifferent to love or suffering, a trial by nature as brutal as the storms of their childhood. Here, among jagged peaks and thin air, the two must confront not only the wounds of their bodies but the terrors buried deep in memory.
If they are to survive-if they are to save one another-Ricky and M.J. must summon a strength older than the nuclear age, older than baseball, older even than the village they left behind. They must call upon the spirit of their ancestors, warriors in times past, and prove themselves worthy not only to others, but to each other.
Epic in scope yet intimate at its heart, this is the story of love tested by history, by nature, by guilt and redemption-a journey across America and into the soul itself.
About the Author :
Robert Townsend is among some of the few men in America familiar with the war of ruse and stratagem between the US and the Soviet Union. His Long War series speaks of decent people who make life-and-death decisions only to be haunted by what they have done.
After graduating from the University of Wisconsin in 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War protests, Townsend flew 130 combat missions in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. From 1982 to 1989, he was Deputy Chief of the Air Force Intelligence Agency, counter-deception directorate. He is among few men in America familiar with the war of ruse and stratagem between the US and the USSR. He is currently working on the Long War series addressing deception, war, and peace in a 20th-century world of contrived and real moral ambiguity.
Townsend comes from a long linefather, grandfathers, and great-grandfathersof soldiers, American and pre-American. Slavic on his mother's and a deep-south redneck on his 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 entirely useless, he was told. He can always serve as a bad example.
His stories and novels arise from family history, fables, stories told around the kitchen table, and his 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 graduated from the University of Wisconsin (BA), studied at Freies Universitat Berlin (Certifikat), and received an MA from Georgetown University. Since leaving the intelligence business, he has turned his attention to writing stories and essays. This early passion was waylaid by life and work.
