Excerpt!
Epilogue: Utah 2019
Her phone is ringing. I’m using the land line because the call is too important for a cell phone. I can’t risk the hassles: static, weak sound, or a dropped call. My voice has to reach across the Rocky Mountains, across the Great Plains, and all the way to Wisconsin. And it has to reach across nearly forty years and who knows what changes and pain as well. She never got married. Does that mean anything? Girls who went to Saint Anne’s were brought up to get married.
Just like the boys who went to St. Andrew’s were supposed to grow up to be captains of business or leaders of the people— like my old buddy, Clint, now known as Congressman Welch. Claire, Clint, and I had been private school kids, brought up with the belief that we were entitled to turn our expensive educations into prestigious positions in society.
Well, Clint had done that by winning his dad’s seat in Congress. I didn’t know anything about Claire except she’d never married, and she still lived in Camden. Right there in Clint’s district.
She must be scared.
Ring, ring, ring. Is she standing by the phone, afraid to answer?
I’d phoned her once before, but it was a long, long time ago, a painful conversation between strangers that I still remember with humiliation. I’m expecting this call to be painful too. Ring, ring.
Maybe she isn’t home. Or maybe she’s letting her message machine take the calls. That seems likely, come to think of it. She’s probably been getting harassing calls. Christ, harassing calls! At least mine isn’t one of those. Please answer. Please. Ring, ring.
She isn’t answering. Well, I can understand that. So I need to say something to her message machine, something that will remind her without scaring her. Maybe just tell her my name and hope—
“Hello?” Suddenly her voice. Tentative, as she’d been the last time. I’m so startled that I gibber incoherently, “Claire? Claire? It’s Benny. I’m Benny?”
Silence. I can hear her breathing. “Claire?” I try again, afraid that she might hang up. “Do you remember me? Benny from high school. I made a promise to you?”
She starts to cry.
The rule for guys like me was that we'd grow up to be like our parents. Our parents put a lot of work and money into making sure we did. I got it all: the expensive private school education, the summers in Europe, the family connections to a congressman and other influential people, an admission to Yale. I was fast tracked for success.
Instead, I became the witness to a rape.
And I fell in love, broke a bunch of laws, made an irrevocable decision, and made a lifetime promise.
And now, forty years later, I am making a phone call.
The Year I Went Crazy is a rewrite of an earlier novel, Coyote Summer. The plot is much the same, but Coyote Summer is a magical realism novel with a fantasy element, while The Summer I Went Crazy is straight realistic literary fiction about coming of age.
**TRIGGER WARNING – While not containing the direct decription of rape, it does describe dealing with aftermath of rape and has drug and alcohol abuse.
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Author bio:
Laura is an artist who lives on an island with her husband and her two dogs. She has always entertained herself by telling herself stories. As a child, she used to like going to bed because she could lie awake under the covers and run movies in her head. Later, as an adult, she enjoyed long distance driving for the opportunity to spend hours writing novels in her imagination.
Now Laura divides her retirement time between dog rescue, care for disabled people, political activism, and yes, she still tells herself stories while she is driving. Her first book, The Dog Thief and Other Stories, written under the pen name of Jill Kearney, was listed by Kirkus Review as one of the One Hundred Best Indy Books of 2015. She's also the author of I Once Was Lost, But Now I'm Found, Limbo, The Eclipse Dancer, and Wild Hare. She has a story contribution in the book Rescue Smiles, too.
Congratulations on your book!
ReplyDeleteThe excerpt sounds good. I like the cover.
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