Not Dark Yet (2023)

A pledge made in college between two friends becomes a harsh reality three decades later when Henry calls unexpectedly upon Charlie to honor their pact to exit the planet on acceptable terms. The feisty Henry is determined to control his final days in order to maintain his dignity and minimize the impact on his wife, teenage son, ailing mother and friends. A veiled ulterior motive is to force Charlie to accept his own unavoidable fate and fully embrace the time he has left.

When Henry’s summons arrives, Charlie is treading water in “an inert state” brought on by the abrupt departure of his wife and loss of his job in a small-town bank. Henry’s condition compels his friend into action, and the duo undertakes an often darkly humorous process as Henry, a landscape architect, proves adept at keeping things in semi-perspective while utilizing his sardonic wit to smooth away the jagged edges.

An unsettled Charlie bounces back and forth between despair and disbelief at Henry’s antics to willing partner-in-crime, always accompanied by classic rock tunes of their younger days. Helping along the way are Joanne, a committed hospice worker with whom Charlie clashes over Henry’s needs and desires, and Pete, a friend to Henry and an innkeeper who lost his partner after a long illness.

Set in the mountain town of Asheville, Not Dark Yet is a moving tale of love and loss that digs deep into the power of friendship and acceptance of what Henry acknowledges, channeling Jackson Browne, as “the one dance you’ll do alone.”

Published by Back Nine Books, 2023

Eliot’s Tale (2010)

As he hits 50, Eliot Smith finds himself at a point where he realizes that his life, while not exactly what he envisioned, is all he has left. What he finds most troubling are not the mysteries of tomorrow, but the nagging “things done and left undone.” Wrestling a sabbatical from a reluctant boss, Eliot sails forth from Richmond, Virginia in his aged Mercedes, music blasting, to answer the questions of yesterday. Taped to the dash, drawn from the poet after whom he’s named, is a simple guide:

What we call the beginning is often the end /And to make an end is to make a beginning. / The end is where we start from.

Eliot leaves behind a testy wife already bothered by his current state, and with a secret of her own, to undertake a zigzag quest for enlightenment. Meandering from family to long-lost friends to strangers with an intersecting tale, the solo traveler finds that others will tell him things he needs to know, for better or worse. His search forces him to confront the loss of a friend in Vietnam, memories of first love, the depths of friendship, family secrets and his own mortality. As he searches, Eliot also discovers the tenuous nature of his own marriage and wrestles with the potential consequences. What Eliot uncovers ranges from the outrageously funny to the deadly serious, while his own observations on his small-town upbringing and coming of age in the 1960s can be insightful, troubled, lewd or just plain hilarious. Like Richard Ford’s Frank Bascombe and Phillip Roth’s Nathan Zuckerman, Eliot confronts the things that made him in order to face whatever lies ahead.

Published by Back Nine Books, 2010

Coming Soon: Snake Bit

Wilson Barnes is returning to his rural hometown on the coast of North Carolina in full retreat from the mean streets of Miami, reporting to work as a detective for a former friend, now the local sheriff, and seeking a simpler existence. Turns out pretty quickly that things aren’t small-town quiet as Barnes finds himself immersed in a series of grisly deaths involving poisonous snakes as weapons. He’s paired with a self-possessed African-American detective who’s not crazy about being part of a team. But the two dig into the murders, dealing with a shady radio evangelist, a strange biologist holed up in the swamp, a sneaky newspaper reporter seeking his big break, an outlaw church where snake-handling is part of the ceremony, and even rumors of a lurking Satanic cult.

Adding to Barnes’ woes is the unexpected emergence of his high-school girlfriend who makes no secret of her desire to rekindle the flame, despite her marriage into one of the town’s wealthier families. Perhaps offsetting that uncomfortable situation is his reconnection with an old female buddy who reigns over a jumping local roadhouse.

As the murders continue and no easy solutions present themselves, the two detectives develop a grudging relationship that begins to evolve into actual friendship. The only question remains uncovering the motive for the unsettling killings and the cold-blooded mind behind them.

Snake Eyes is the opening book in the “Down East” series that’s centered in a rural county in eastern North Carolina where sandy soil, tobacco fields, swamps and touristy beaches color the landscape, and where the detectives seek truths often hidden beneath layers of history, distrust, prejudice, and small-town politics and politeness.