By F. Ellsworth Lockwood
Eltopia, Washington
Remarks:
The Final Cruise is a completed novel looking for a publisher. Included in the following post are a brief description and first chapter. Please let me know what you think and, if you like what you read, request more chapters.
Brief Description:
On Earth, Paradise Threatened
T.J.’s estranged wife leaves her Oak City home and moves back into T.J.’s tiny cabin at Paradise Pointe. He dreads living with her again. She will abort his illicit love affair with his neighbor, Stella. Beyond that, Elizabeth hates the ambience of the little, privately owned West Coast community of Paradise.
T.J. fears that Elizabeth’s arrival will result in chaos. As he well knows, she will stomp on the pet lizards that scamper beneath his bed. Elizabeth will squash centipedes, mash millipedes, banish banana slugs, and salt the wild salamanders; she will, he fears, demand that he burn every beloved, decaying stump. In short, she will pit T.J. against nature, that is, against God himself; she will try in vain to turn his cabin, which is on the edge of a redwood forest, into a regular city residence, to remake the wooded acre into a city plot, and in her fruitless battle against weeds, decay, dust and dirt, Elizabeth will spoil Paradise.
The final cruise, however, is far more than a story about the struggles of a man and his wife to realize their views of the good life; it is the saga of a boy in search of manhood, a man in search of self determination, and a couple grasping for the spiritual meanings of their separate universes.
***