John Wingspread Howell
Published: 2001
Total Pages: 208
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After hearing a story about a man who built a castle as a monument to his love for his wife, Eunice Motley became overwhelmed with the realization that the man she married did not love her “that much.” She then promptly disappeared. Overwhelmed by his wife’s sudden departure, Clarence Motley drove the car into the St. Lawrence, leaving their six children orphaned and forever averse to water. Thirty years later, all six are still single, and still gather at the old homestead for each other’s birthdays. Martin Motley is the youngest of the six orphans. He was ten when his mother left. He was also, she often told him, her favorite. He was the last to see her before she abandoned them. On her way out of their lives, she told Martin something cryptic about trusting his intuition and saving for a rainy day. As the story opens, Martin is forty, still a virgin, and investigating sex abuse for a living. He is the goddess patrol, avenging the desecration of young women. For fifteen years he has lived in one room saving and investing most of his income for "a rainy day," while saving himself for the perfect woman. Meanwhile, the three arenas in Martin Motley’s life converge in simultaneous crisis. Professionally, he is faced with his biggest case: allegations of sexual abuse by a popular community leader with no evidence to support them except the word of a juvenile prostitute and—Martin’s infallible intuition. Personally, Martin, with the help of his psychotherapist, is working up the courage to take one of his “perfect women” down from the pedestal and risk for a relationship. In the family, new information comes out about where his mother went all those years ago and why. What Martin does with his memories, his intuition and his unfulfilled dreams when the ghosts come charging out of every crack in the teetering floor beneath him makes for one compelling psychodrama.
