Description
The Home Stretch by Wayne M. Johnston
ISBN: 978-1-936364-34-3
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-936364-35-2
Price: $15.00
Autobiographical Fiction
207 pages
For Bill Smith, the end has always been in view. His life has seen a series of unlikely extensions. In this autobiographical novel, Wayne M. Johnston has created an ordinary man who, throughout his life, is confronted with extraordinary circumstances. It is a coming-of-age story in which the peace that allegedly comes with maturity is often shunted aside to make room for yet another crisis. And it is an uplifting story in its portrait of a man of quality living in a perilous time.
Raised in a religious cult, Bill Smith cannot tolerate the hypocrisy of his parents. Bound to them by love and obligation, he rejects their beliefs. He develops compassion for others, but becomes self-destructive. He is given to the physical life, with a touch of adventure. He becomes the chief engineer on a seagoing tugboat. The description of weathering a storm off the coast of Alaska is one the best pieces of writing in years about men at sea. Later there is the leukemia, which he is told will kill him. And through it all is his fraught relationship with his father. Just when Bill has come to believe he has put the worst of it to rest, he learns something more about his father that opens everything up again, except that this time someone else is the victim.
Reviews
“Wayne M. Johnston’s novel brims with power and beauty, his words a road map through sickness and war, and the tangles of fatherhood and forgiveness. Asking the questions that hum through long nights—How does one splinter from abuse? Stitch up the wounds of tragedy? Manage hardship and memory?—The Home Stretch paints a delicate and endearing portrait of a man trying his best to make sense of the complicated path of living with pain and uncertainty.”
—Jonathan Starke, author of You’ve Got Something Coming
“This story of overcoming adversity in several of its many forms provides inspiration in its depiction of a man of perseverance, resilience, and stamina—the exact qualities we need to weather the storms of our time.”
—Willa Gold, author of Stella and Tulip
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