All rights reserved by Denlinger's Publishers, including the right to reproduce this electronic book, or portions thereof, in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
E. Joseph Brown is a widower who spends much time alone when he is not motoring amid mountains, deserts and canyons of the American west. To him, no where else is the world so huge, still and hushed amid the ghostly, murmuring breeze in deep, wide canyons or tranquil mountains.
He recognized the strong desire and need in himself to write during his travels, when there was enough time to think and muse over the places he visited. But it was not until he retired that time permitted.
His experiences in writing corporate documentation in the form of clear explanations and guide lines of accounting and management procedures instilled in him a desire which may be unique among writers.
Aware that the written language, which can easily create moods, falters somewhat in its description of scenery and the true, specific feeling of any given event, he is dedicated to that end. What specific word or words describe a half-starved man's feeling when he is eating a home-cooked country stew of beef, new potatoes, sauted onions and turnip chips, that do not apply to a myriad of other incidents and circumstance? There are none. And that feeling is singular. But the words satisfaction, filling, gratified, and passionate can just as easily be tacked on to his feelings for his new sports car. It is the author's task to inscribe befitting words and phrases that leave the reader with a vivid image of scenery in his mind and as valid a feeling as possible for the particular human drama within that scenery in his heart.
Under the auspices of his best friend Jerry, a lapidary, he has learned only little about rocks and minerals, preferring to hunt for attractive stones instead of trying to identify his finds in the field. On a two-week vacation, he and Jerry's assistant, Zack Evans, a former New Yorker, set out to Big Bend National Park to hunt for a rare form of agate. But Ben has secretly taken along his gold detector to scan the sandy arroyos outside the park near the small Texas desert communities of Lajitas and Study Butte.
In Study Butte he meets a manifestation of the image harbored in his libido as the woman he would die for. But he is beset by his awkward lack of social graces around a beautiful and very well educated woman, whose wit continually clobbers his ego. But he has little control over that fate. Through something akin to involuntary action he finds himself impelled to try and stay around her, and eventually realizes he is hopelessly in love.
To add to his bewilderment he has discovered an iron plate buried deep atop one of the distant desert hills, where nothing exists except the dry, lonesome breeze and other hills of its kind. Puzzles were always Ben's first love, until he met Jane. And he must now cope with her feminist attitudes to persuade her to join him in what anyone would consider a cockeyed venture, to examine the spot more thoroughly, thereby keeping her close and appeasing his curiosity at the same time.
This tale contains the highest form of pure adventure, and a very present aura of mystery, mixed with a decent account of pure and intense love between a man and a woman. It carries with it accurate information about rocks, minerals and precious stones that many people may find quite surprising.
Electronic Editions: ( * Disclaimer )
Download via Email $6.95
3.25" PC disk $6.95 + $2.55 shipping and handling each disk.
NEW - InstaBook paperback Edition