The more I pondered the mystery, the deeper it grew: big trucks everywhere…around me every day of my life. Yet I found I knew nothing about trucking or the people manning the cabs – outside of one hokey Hollywood film that threw an ape in there with the driver. How was anyone to get a true picture of truckers and the people populating the industry? It seemed apparent that truckers didn’t write – and writers didn’t truck… (more…)

I’d like to tell you that Dawn came fully clad out of the cleft head of Zeus…but that would be avoiding truth in favor of myth. To give you a fair answer, the character of Dawn contains a part of every woman I’ve ever known – from my own mother, to my former wife, down to the wildest tigress I ever dated. And it doesn’t stop there.

Quite a confession…but not very satisfying. No mere floozy is Dawn Carlisle, this wild woman wanderer, who suicidally jumps out of Abner’s truck at the Palm Coast I-95 exit in Florida, then turns into a principled young woman capable of nursing an injured bull terrier back to health. She then, in good time, falls for her rescuer, Abner Weaver, the truck driver who has interrupted her march to oblivion down the American road…all of it, quite a stretch. How can this woman have so many sides?

Where, but in America, does a woman have the right to cast herself adrift with no one concerned enough to come to her aid? Someone might help (as Abner Weaver most certainly does), but it would take an unusually kind person – sensitive to the pain in another – to step outside the callousness we generally display toward anyone wandering the berm. A lone female vagabond making no secret of her desire to obtain a lift – health and legal ramifications aside, with the possibility she is a decoy for hidden attackers – would you stop to pick up such a woman? (more…)

Whut’s playin’ at duh Roxy…?

You mean to say your stock portfolio has dipped alarmingly in the last ten days? Your retirement account has taken the express to Nowheresville? Don’t worry…the boys (Bush and Paulson) and at least one girl (Pelosi) down there in Foggy Bottom have everything firmly in control; today there’ll undoubtedly be another one of those now infamous, “Sunday conferences”…yuk, yuk.

Just where have your savings gone?  The answer is as uncomplicated as it is offputting. Your dough, folks, has gone to MONEY HEAVEN. (more…)

In case you found it too messy, pasting and copying the review (mentioned in my last post) to  your browser, here’s the full review – as I should have provided it:

One of the great joys of being a book reviewer is that you never know what is going to turn up in your mail box. There are so many great new writers out there. In fact I have a confession to make, did you know that you could take me to a bookstore and I can pretty much guarantee that I would not be able to find a book that I wanted to read! Book stores sell the NYT best sellers and little else. Well I don’t like the Clancy’s and Stephen King’s of the world, I like new authors, ones that have some heart in what they write.

Which brings me to Richard Ide and his new book 3 Aces. I read the synopsis, and I have to admit that I was not sure that as a plot line it would work. Ex Vietnam vet with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) turned long distance truck driver meets a depressed alcoholic poker playing young lady and they attempt to rehabilitate each other with the help of a three legged dog!

Well I was wrong! The plot line works splendidly. Richard Ide pulls it off with aplomb. (more…)