So frequently in the pandemic it’s the little things we miss. Going out maskless, unable to smile at others. Hand washing less than 10 to 15 times a day.
On the other hand getting older involves a series of painful losses. Loved ones. Friends. The sense of hearing in some. The sense of sight in others. It sure hurts, but life in many ways grows deeper and sweeter depending on how you see the half FILLED glass. Thank God for small favors and the gift of life.
Until 1980 Kristine and I had only rented our homes. With our first baby on the way we felt the hour for investing in a house had arrived. This growing up thing was getting serious.
In Topanga, CA. where we rented, we quickly realized in our price range we had only one option in this semi-rural area. It was a place Kris called “the mole house.” It was un-cleverly built into a rather loose crevice in a hill.
Gophers were more likely to survive there than humans. Earthworms seemed to have settled into the kitchen. It seemed to be one good rainfall from becoming a large mudslide. I suspect it is either buried for future archaeologists or still up for sale.
The best we could do was to buy a house one half block from a commercial street. It was in the San Fernando Valley in L.A.
This valley was the home of the original “valley girls.” Nonetheless our then three month old daughter never learned to converse in Valleyspeak. Valleyspeak is classified as a sociolect.
Wikipedia notes that in this sociolect “’Like’ is used as a filler word like “um….’” It gives an example: “I’m, like, about to call my friend.”
As to the new place, the house was around 30 years old. It had about 1500 square feet. It sat up on one of the lowest hills I’ve ever seen.
The price was reasonable, but the 1980 interest rate was in range of the planet Neptune. That was an appropriate planet for having bought the house we were left in a sea of debt. The smells of the restaurants on the nearby commercial street and the sounds of the freeway near that street did not add to the joys of home ownership.
Our one snowfall in 14 years prompted me to take beautiful analogue pictures of the property. None of them developed. We lived through local fires, floods and an urban riot, as well as robbery, a repeatedly leaky roof and a major earthquake. To say the house was cursed may have been an understatement.
Thank God after 14 years in this house I was promoted to a new position in San Diego. The debt was soon off our backs as the house sold in 30 days.
We tried to find the right house along with our real estate agent. We were living in a San Diego corporate apartment provided by my employer, but only for so long.
After weeks of house hunting our then 14 year old daughter said she did not want to attend two different schools with a purchase after Labor Day. That sounded reasonable.
In the “antiquity” of 1994 we asked for a printout of houses that fit our needs from the agent. Black ink was emblazoned on something they called paper, which may soon become extinct. We drove off without the agent and just kept looking.
By the grace of God we found the right house and we still live there. We are impressed by the persistence of the agent 25 years later who writes us about her readiness to assist us in our “next move.” I guess there are three things you can’t avoid, death, taxes and at least one dogged, real estate agent.
I was reminded of that again recently. Curious about our house’s value I Googled it at a real estate firm’s site. Then I went in the front yard and was settled on the top of a ladder cleaning a drain.
An agent from the firm whose evaluation site I had Googled cornered me on the ladder. He was with his young son, perhaps an agent in training. The agent’s posture bore a certain resemblance to a hungry lion planning an all-out attack on an unwilling victim.
It took a little time in that aroused state to convince him the Googling was only idle curiosity. Fortunately being there with his son he stopped short of pushing my ladder over. My spinal cord and I, like, really appreciated that.
H. Robert Rubin, best-selling Amazon memoirist and author of Look Backward Angel and How Did I Get Through This? available on Amazon. Please Save the Third Dance for Me will be published on June 15, again, available on Amazon. It is available for pre-order now.
Flannery O’Connor once wrote of writers that anyone who has survived their childhood has enough material to last a lifetime. I am not sure, but I think Flannery might have agreed that childhood ends at thirteen when adolescence begins. As you will note, I survived.
The tension started early for me. Harold, my father, was not very fond of his first born son (me) almost from the moment of birth. I guess his problem with me started with his over-sensitivity to plucked chickens. He never ate poultry. I suppose he saw my fresh, infant physique in the hospital as something akin to a plucked chicken, a foul fowl.
As a result of his poultry derision, his entrée each Thanksgiving was meatloaf. He saw my younger, favored brother as similar to his Thanksgiving meatloaf.
From about the age of four through twelve, I ingested each dinner as though it was my last Thanksgiving meal. I was as round as a new eight ball on smooth, green felt. I was so round my classmates considered using me for a basketball until they realized I wouldn’t fit through the hoop.
In fifth grade, I played the snare drum in my school’s symphony orchestra. There is a picture I still have of the entire orchestra. I am holding my snare drum in front of my waist. It’s difficult to distinguish my round head from the round drum.
Once in sixth grade the PE coach was appalled that one of his “real” athletes allowed me to successfully run a football end-around gaining yardage. This was a play whose success required a running back with genuine speed, or, a lifeless “tackler.”
The coach screamed in the student’s face saying, “You have actually missed “tackling” Rubin? I think the tackler likely had un-diagnosed attention deficit disorder (ADD) to which the coach then added post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
In sixth grade I was sitting in the cafeteria with a reasonably attractive girl in my class. I of course found cafeterias very alluring.
She asked me if I was going on the 6th grade trip to the Caribbean. I did like Caribbean food. However, knowing the trip would likely require revealing my whopping torso to the inhabitants of a beach, I responded, “No one is going.” She said, “You mean you’re somebody?” That question was all the motivation I needed to become thin and wiry for the rest of my life.
Sometimes our “survival” of childhood just requires a defining moment. Walt Whitman once said, “Either define the moment or the moment will define you,”
H. Robert Rubin, best-selling Amazon memoirist and author of Look Backward Angel, How Did I Get Through This? and Please Save the Third Dance for Me, available on Amazon.
So Erich Segal penned Love Story and it became a career turning point for Ryan O’ Neal (who played Oliver Barrett) and Ali MacGraw (who played Jenny Cavilleri). It opened, cleverly, on Valentine’s Day 1970. The movie was a powerful tearjerker about two college students who were absolutely crazy about each other. Let the word crazy not be lost on you.
Oliver and Jenny had been raised on “different sides of the tracks.” The couple married against his father’s (played by Ray Milland) will and Oliver was disowned from a fortune.
Soon they tried to conceive a child. They were having difficulty. Medical evaluation revealed Jenny had leukemia. She died soon thereafter.
It was a movie that grabbed at my heart strings but also that of millions of Americans. It was about the in-love phase of a powerful relationship. The in-love phase is that portion of time when both people have stars in their eyes peering through rose colored glasses. They didn’t get a chance to live “happily ever after” because there was no ever after.
In 1977, a movie was launched that was a bit more down to earth, filled with wonderful one liners. It was in essence a memoir of Woody Allen’s unsuccessful relationship with Diane Keaton. The movie. Annie Hall, delved with good humor into the mystery of relationships that develop beyond the in-love phase. It was awarded several of the highest Academy Awards available.
When we saw the movie in the theater, I was in the middle of the in–love phase with the love of my life, Kristine. She was a little taken aback by my laughter which was a buck short of a seizure. I found the movie sidesplitting.
The mystery is amplified in the last scene where the two break up and as Alvy (Woody Allen) walks away he does a voice over as follows:
After that it got pretty late. And we
both hadda go, but it was great seeing
Annie again, right? I realized what a
terrific person she was and-and how much
fun it was just knowing her and I-I
thought of that old joke, you know, this-
this-this guy goes to a psychiatrist and
says, “Doc, uh, my brother’s crazy. He
thinks he’s a chicken.” And, uh, the
doctor says, “Well, why don’t you turn
him in?” And the guy says, “I would, but
I need the eggs.” Well, I guess that’s
pretty much how how I feel about
relationships. You know, they’re totally
irrational and crazy and absurd and …
but, uh, I guess we keep goin’ through it
because, uh, most of us need the eggs.
The Notebook, addressed in even the best of relationships how that might end with one spouse dissolving into the nothingness of a death from Alzheimer’s. It was a beautiful, memorable film.
My stories frequently walk you through events in detailed steps. Suffice it to say we share with the married or divorced reader to some degree the challenges, the ups and downs of a long term relationship. I believe conflicts are normal and that the challenge for us by the grace of God is to, “fight fair.”
These words of the contemporary, philosopher Alain-De-Botton, (in an On Being interview by Krista Tippett), speak to the challenge:
So I think the work of love is to try, when we can manage it — we can’t always — to go behind the front of this rather depressing, challenging behavior and try and ask where it might’ve come from. Love is doing that work to ask oneself, “Where’s this rather aggressive, pained, noncommunicative, unpleasant behavior come from?” If we can do that, we’re on the road to knowing a little bit about what love really is, I think.
(https://onbeing.org/programs/alain-de-botton-the-true-hard-work-of-love-and-relationships-aug2018/)
Kristine and I, much of the time, make those attempts in the hands of God, praying and seeking the direction of the Holy Spirit (the counselor of the Trinity in the heart of the believer). It was my late mom who frequently noted, “No one said it would be easy, Robert”
De Botton as to our overall condition noted in that same interview:
Look, one of the first important truths is, you’re crazy. Not you, as it were; all of us, that all of us are deeply damaged people. The great enemy of love, good relationships, good friendships, is self-righteousness. If we start by accepting that of course we’re only just holding it together, and in many ways, really quite challenging people — I think if somebody thinks that they’re easy to live with, they’re by definition going to be pretty hard and don’t have much of an understanding of themselves.
(https://onbeing.org/programs/alain-de-botton-the-true-hard-work-of-love-and-relationships-aug2018/)
The good Lord puts enormous value on the quality of humility throughout Scriptures. In the King James Version of the Bible in the Book of Proverbs, 16:18, it reads “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
We humans are prone to self-destructive behavior with or without pride. It is only a matter of degree. I once saw one of the most disciplined tennis players I ever watched at a book signing, Michael Chang. He had co-written with Mike Yorkey his autobiography, Holding Serve. He was the French Open champion as a teenager. He admitted as a world class athlete that every now and then he binged on unhealthy food. And, he is arguably the top of the human pyramid.
With all that’s working against us including the odds against a long term marriage, perspective helps. Over time I gathered that the good Lord places believers in holy matrimony to be sanctified. It is a long word that means to become more holy. That may give new meaning to Holy matrimony for some readers. Sure enough a far smarter man than me, Tim Keller, a highly regarded preacher and writer, rendered that same opinion in his book, The Meaning of Marriage.
More loving, of course, is a central core of more holy. Forgiveness is a central part of more loving. I understand, easier said than done.
Kristine and I have our struggles like every other couple. The thing to remember, particularly after years of marriage, is that every bit of it is worth it.
H. Robert Rubin, best-selling Amazon memoirist and author of Look Backward Angel, How Did I Get Through This? and Please Save the Third Dance for Me, all available on Amazon.
“The ocean has always been a salve to my soul,” said the troubadour Jimmy Buffett. I have the wonderful privilege of living just a few miles from the Pacific. And oh, it is pacific. It so calms my soul. Sometimes I am delightfully surprised by the panoramic view climbing a hill to somewhere else. Sometimes that view is my sole destination.
***
Kristine a few years ago arranged with a couple we so enjoy to meet for wine and appetizers near sunset along the shore. It was a lovely surprise. The breeze was soothing. The sunset was rich with hues of gold and dark blue. It was a wonderful respite from daylight.
***
I remember the contrast of the beautiful Atlantic just a few blocks from where I worked in the summer of 1963. I had just graduated from high school. I worked for a late middle-aged man who ran his own parking lot in downtown Miami.
My most vivid recollection is about one memorable car. It found its way into the parking lot daily. It was a customer’s 1949, black Cadillac.I regularly parked it for him in the lot. We always backed the cars into the parking spaces. The “Caddy” had no power steering or air conditioning. My puny 130 pounds and skinny arms were barely up to the task.
The bright sun beat down on the black car as though it was igniting an oven. The ability to deftly maneuver that wheel was beyond my skill set. Though my first hernia emerged about 45 years later, I suspect that tissue began to weaken right there under that blazing Miami sun in that four-wheeler, the size of a Sherman tank.
And then, hours later I would drive home along Biscayne Bay that empties into the beautiful Atlantic. I inhaled that wonderful breeze. And, all was well.
***
It was 1978. Kris and I spent that year in Ventura, CA. We had never picnicked at the beach. We purchased arguably the best sandwiches in town. As I recall they were very “California.” The sandwich consisted of a bed of sprouts, a lot of turkey breast and two slices of exceedingly healthy, whole grain bread with mayo. We were so looking forward to our afternoon on the beach.
Then we sat down and began to eat our tempting morsels. As I bit down more and more my youthful molars chomped on grains of sand. So this was a picnic on a windy, beautiful beach. Just another lesson in the daily grind.
***
It was circa 1995, Kris was out fairly deep in the ocean at our local beach. I was not with her.
She suddenly got caught in a terrible undertow. She had swum competitively from the age of eight through college. She had made swimming part of her aerobics for years. She had taught our son Chad to swim at the age of four. Now, she was in something she had never experienced.
She struggled to breathe and was hit repetitively with water. Finally she settled back and got beyond this horrific current of water. She got to the beach groggy and thankful this swim had not been her last. Like most everything in life the ocean can be a haven or a living hell. By the grace of God Kristine was not swallowed by the ocean she loved.
***
It was about 2006. Kris and I took a California, winter’s beach walk. It was a route we had taken many times. We first headed north. The sky was darkening. We picked up our pace. We took our usual 180 at a spot on the beach.
Winds began to blow. Pellets of rain began to fall. That somewhat cold wind was directly in our faces. This was not our usual jaunt along the water. I felt more like an explorer in a land of fierce weather than a middle-aged guy walking his spouse along the Pacific.
It was challenging. But, it was actually a lot of fun. Sometimes you are just surprised by how things work out.
***
It was 2005. My entire family of five took an ocean tour of all the Hawaiian Islands having flown to Honolulu. The group consisted of Kris, Courtney, Alex and Chad, (my adult children and son-in-law Alex). Chad was actually fifteen. We toured each island with a deadline to return to our ship to continue the voyage. The deadlines engendered stress I could have lived without on this beautiful voyage.
On likely the last night before we docked for our flight home, it was moonlit. Kris and I went to the top of the ship and sat sipping some wine. It was a balmy evening with beautiful waves painted by the moonlight. What an idyllic night on the high seas, the perfect ending to our South Pacific journey.
H. Robert Rubin, best-selling Amazon memoirist and author of Look Backward Angel, How Did I Get Through This? and Please Save the Third Dance for Me, available on Amazon.
This seems worth a third look.
I suppose it was my mini-career as a medical examiner that taught me much about the fragility of life. The work was done from July of 1975 through December of 1978. It was an occupation that involved the living learning from the newly dead. That portion of my life crisscrossed the first third of my fourth decade, ages 30 to 33.
It was a winding road with occasional surprises. My “volume” or sensitivity was turned way down. It was, to say the least, a grisly form of medicine I practiced while so “shielded” in Baltimore, MD and Ventura, CA.
One aspect of the work despite my insensitivity was too glaring to miss, the alarming endings that came upon young, active Marylanders and Californians. The deaths I observed were unforgettable for me as I too was a young, active Marylander and later Californian.
From age 16 through 34 I had three Volkswagens. The first car was a gift from my father at age 16 in the early 60s. It was a VW Beetle. The car was tiny. In the rear was a flat, vertical, miniscule engine. When you closed the doors the vehicle was so air tight that now and then it would hurt your ears. The Beetle had a sun roof and had an exterior color I would call khaki with a khaki interior.
I really loved that car. It turned on a dime. When I used the sunroof in the beautiful Miami weather it was a delight.
In 1978 for a young woman in her VW Beetle, delight turned into disaster. I was the Assistant County Medical Examiner in Ventura that year. That day, her corpse was waiting for me when I arrived in the autopsy room. As best as I can recall she may have had alcohol on board. She was alone in the Beetle. This young driver lost control and her burgeoning life was snuffed out in an instant.
Kristine, my spouse, mentioned to me afterwards that I seemed particularly bothered by the death. I must have realized at some level I could lose her under like circumstances.
It occurs to me now as I remember that event that the average, sixteen year old, American, male driver has an accident in his first year of solo driving. My last drive in a VW Beetle certainly could have been me on some dark highway in the Miami of the early 1960s.
One thing that seems complex is that in the face of my safety consciousness since that mini-career, I bought and enjoyed maneuverable, road hugging, small cars. I had two Toyota Celica sports cars over the course of the last twenty years of my work-life. Some things just aren’t meant to be understood.
***
Then there was a case in Baltimore that predated the VW incident. I don’t recall if I was engaged to Kris at the time, but, I may have been. I was an Assistant State Medical Examiner in Maryland. Waiting for me in the autopsy room that morning was the dead body of a man about my age, though I believe several years younger. He had been engaged and about to be married.
He and his closest male friends were attending his bachelor party. During the course of the evening he drank a considerable amount of alcohol. At some point he collapsed and could not be revived. The world’s oldest tranquillizer had done him in.
In this era of capitalism even a short peek at the label of a beer like Lowenbrau suggests the long, profitable tie between alcohol and humanity. The date on that label is 1690.
That brewery lasted a whole lot longer than that young man. His life ended in celebration, too much celebration.
***
I suppose given such circumstances I was particularly worried in Baltimore when I found a dark skin lesion in the middle of my young chest. My profession certainly added to the drama of the occasion. I knew full well that life could be short. I may have even been aware that fetuses had been stricken with leukemia before they were even born. It was a grand relief when I was told this was a blue nevus, a completely benign lesion. Bullet dodged.
I saw all kinds of people who had died young in their association with the grim reaper. The song went “Only the good die young. “ Don’t believe it.
H. Robert Rubin, best-selling Amazon memoirist as well as novelist and author of Look Backward Angel, How Did I Get Through This?, Please Save the Third Dance for Me and The Bloom is on the Rose, all available on Amazon.
“And once I went on book tour and experienced the outrageous joy of reading to an audience of readers, which is about the most fun I can have legally, I knew I would do it again. Assuming they would let me.”
So said the memoirist Kelly Corrigan in Why We Write About Ourselves. The “We” refers to the anthology’s numerous authors.
It brought me back to the to the last half of 2018. I had published my second book of memoirs and had the opportunity to give a reading. The reading was from an unpublished memoir. The subject was my beloved mom. I gave the reading at a café in San Diego.
It was a “Share the mic” evening with an audience of about 100. I was sandwiched in the center of the café’s calendar by a melodic cluster of largely, folk singers. I can’t sing a lick, but, the first slice of sandwich toast was a good warm up for my reading.
I had the good sense this time to place the memoir on stiff cardboard with a large, bold font. My aging eyes became a non-factor.
The stagehand placed my mic ideally. My “senior” voice was clear and engaging, despite the tiny, hearing devices inserted in either ear. Those aids can obscure for me my true volume to the audience.
I began to read about the woman who saved the emotional life of her three children in the face of the difficult, whirling dervish who happened to be my dad. The love we all share for Mom is almost inexpressible.
Nonetheless, as I began my work about our long departed “angel,” you could hear a pin drop. I could easily “act” my way through this story because it was NOT an act. I was comfortable and open as were my listeners. Their applause as I ended warmed my soul.
Afterwards as the crowd dispersed one woman in the crowd came up to me. She told me how much the reading had touched her. She had recently lost her mom and was grieving for her. She gave me a big, bear hug. I had connected, the purest and most vital reason I write. It was a moment in which time stood still.
Sometimes I ask myself, “Why am I driven to write these memoirs? The following comes close: I can present my journey to those who need to hear about it as much as I need to write about it. I need to heal and help others to heal. At times my voice is expressed with a heavy heart and every now and then it’s with all the wit I can muster. The key for me is where the story takes me.
Sue Monk Kidd, in again Why We Write About Ourselves, proffered “At its best, writing draws from the inner life, from a place deep within where we are sourced. We could call it the life of the soul.” That center is where I strive to grow more compassionate, more sensitive and more connected by the grace of God.
H. Robert Rubin, best-selling Amazon memoirist and author of Look Backward Angel, How Did I Get Through This?, and Please Save the Third Dance for Me, available on Amazon.
It was likely the spring of 1975. I was visiting New Orleans, LA for the first time. It was after Mardi Gras to minimize the congestion. My focus was on the French Quarter.
After a few days it was clear I had never really known the meaning of a hearty breakfast. In the Quarter they were huge repasts, that at 31 years of age, I could actually eat and digest without impacting my upper or lower gastrointestinal tract.
There was fresh squeezed orange juice, sweet and at an ideal temperature. In 2020 I cannot find fresh squeezed, orange juice in a grocery.
There were perfectly mixed Bloody Marys to make the occasion a bit merrier. According to bestbloodymary.com, “It was back in the 1920s when Fernand Petiot, an American bartender at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris, mixed up equal parts of tomato juice and vodka. He had no idea that his concoction would become world famous when he agreed with the guy in the bar who suggested he call the drink ‘Bloody Mary.’”
My breakfasts included Eggs Benedict. Antoine’s for the dish was at the top of my French Quarter culinary choices. Per whatscookinginamerica.net, “Credit is given to Delmonico’s Restaurant, the very first restaurant or public dining room opened in the United States. In the 1860’s, a regular patron of the restaurant, Mrs. LeGrand Benedict, finding nothing to her liking and wanting something new to eat for lunch, discussed this with Delmonico’s Chef Charles Ranhofer (1836-1899), Ranhofer came up with Eggs Benedict. He has a recipe called Eggs a’ la Benedick (Eufa a’ la Benedick) in his cookbook called The Epicurean published in 1894.” Charles was the chef who invented Lobster Newberg. As to the question of their history, Delmonico’s in NYC opened in 1827 and the oldest restaurant in New Orleans, Antoine’s opened in 1840.
My Benedicts in New Orleans were an exquisite blending of the Hollandaise with eggs and Canadian bacon. On some days, I think an egg even over easy by itself is as good as it gets.
The cuisine of New Orleans is still hard to find in cities outside the city and the nearby Gulf Coast. Nonetheless I never tasted blackened, Cajun fish until the late eighties in Los Angeles. Be that as it may, the cuisine in the Big Easy was unforgettable in 1975.
By the way, what exactly is easy in New Orleans? The oppressive, summer humidity isn’t easy. Nonetheless it clearly is a big town relative to Mound, Louisiana, a municipality with a population of 17 the last time they checked. Hey, how many people can live on a mound?
One day past breakfast, lunch and almost dinner, I considered ordering bread pudding. I had never tasted this dessert. I couldn’t imagine what it was. It did sound good. Although, at worst, I pictured a hollowed out loaf of Wonder Bread filled with chocolate pudding. By the way, what is wondrous about Wonder Bread?
Clinching the deal on the bread pudding was a strong recommendation from an excellent waiter who had guided me brilliantly to that point. What the chef had done was to perfectly concoct that delicate interface between eggs, bread and cinnamon. It has become my go to, favorite dessert even though I usually eat enough to hack a week off my life.
Ah the tempting restaurants of the Big Easy for senior citizens. So much for the treacherous terrain that is our diet. You are what you eat and on a good day I wreak of cinnamon.
H. Robert Rubin, best-selling Amazon memoirist and author of Look Backward Angel and How Did I Get Through This? available on Amazon. Please Save the Third Dance for Me will be published on June 15, again, available on Amazon. It is available for pre-order now.
Old? What people’s concerns with old age really address is death, a horrible part of life on this planet. I don’t believe anyone who claims they have no anxiety about their last earthly event. As Woody Allen said, “I am not afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”
I do all I can to delay that event. I eat right. I was a regular at the gym pre-pandemic doing the work at home and outside now. I try to adhere to every, well-researched, scientific finding to maintain good health.
I still notice the occasional postural dizziness, the dry, cracking skin, and the progressive jowl development at my chin. I am almost 75 but the GRIM reaper has begun his chase.
Even if you are a hardened skeptic to life’s spiritual dimension, please allow me three paragraphs to consider that option in the midst of our pandemic.
I know deep in my soul there is something beyond our mundane existence. Christ died for our sins and overcame death. That is what numerous great minds have concluded is the other dimension of our reality. Nothing is better documented in antiquity than the reality of Christ.
He provides life eternal to his followers. No one who reads this can disprove that reality. You say the National Institutes of Health have found evidence to the contrary? Interesting thought since their director, Frances Collins, M. D., has written chapter and verse about his belief in Jesus Christ.
May you hear the music in Christ’s message to the human race, particularly if you are amongst the vulnerable in the current pandemic. He offers great hope to those who choose to follow.
I so enjoy reading and writing memoirs. After five years I feel spent. I have covered the memories I cherish, those I laugh about and those I find engaging.
I just got to the final stretch in publishing my last and third memoir, Please Save the Third Dance for Me.
I think you will find my perspective if you pre order now or order on June 15, curious, humorous, helpful and usually deep. I must have learned something in my 75 years
If you are so inclined search the title on Amazon and pre-order. Or, read the sample when I publish on 6/15 to consider a full read. Or you might read some blogs in my archives to consider the purchase.
Thank you. Stay well.
Pilgrim on a Long, Long Journey 