Epiphany Strange is a 19 year old girl who has taken her younger brothers and sisters away from her mother, a drunk, after her father (who was sexually abusing Epiphany from the time she was 11 or 12 to the point of her having one miscarriage and one abortion) moved on to the next daughter in line where he was killed by one of his sons while he was raping the boy's sister. Epiphany, protecting her brothers and sisters, chops up his body and throws it in the trash. The police find the body parts and find out about the abuse and sort of guess a son killed the father to protect a sister. And that's where the D.A. comes in, sorting through what is known and deciding what to do about it. The D.A. has a willful teenage daughter who spends all night long online with males she messages from all over, and calls and texts to the tune of over $100 in long distance before her parents are shocked by the phone bill ... on the same day she was caught smoking in school and suspended along with one of Epiphany's younger brothers, of all people. The D.A. is also sure he and his wife are heading for a divorce. The investigating sheriff's department detective's son meanwhile is expelled from school for bullying kids for their lunch money, including sending one asthmatic to the hospital. All this plays out while the D.A. sorts through all the testimony of the people who work for Epiphany's "Strange Sanctuary and Petting Zoo," all of whom have found a home and sanctuary working for the formerly abused teen. Everything is slowly resolved, ending with the D.A.'s climactic "epiphany" about families. Back cover blurb: Epiphany Strange to Judge Adams: Life is the illness and the cure. You live the answer. What happens is what life is. Life is the question and your own life is your own answer - the only answer there is. You could go as far as to say life is the only therapy that truly works. Some people are scum and the world would be better off if they were not in it. They don't need to be understood. Nobody needs to feel their pain. You catch them in the act and put the world out of a little of its misery - then the only thing left to be sorry for is it happening on your watch because you can no longer sit down in front of the boob tube with a bag of cheese doodles and pretend it's the whales who need saving when you know it's you and me and every one of us. You know why I have a petting zoo? I have it because it's real, because it's about touching gently, about being with each other - families - about knowing and remembering that life and kindness and caring and those we love all go together in some way, some how, some where in the world. You have to be tough to survive - but come here with your family and you'll know a little better why it's worth surviving, and you'll also understand that gentleness in the world not only has a place but is valued and rewarded ... instinctually. You'll come to understand living ought to be more than surviving ... and it is! **Note about this edition: This is the first edition. In the second edition, the size of the print was slightly reduced to lower the retail cost and the 2nd edition divides the novel into a couple of more sections to break the 3/4 of the book long section into bite size pieces. The text of both editions is the same (the kindle version matches the 2nd edition).
About the Author: "[Keith Vlasak's] prose flows as a river. The surface is smooth, placid; the current, strong. When you step in, immerse yourself, glide with the water, you can certainly feel the pull but you don't know where it's taking you. Then, suddenly, you round a bend, the river opens up, a new light bathes the water and the riverbank, and you realize you're in a radically different place." - George Konstantinow I go back a long ways. I was born in 1950 and started sending out my stories in 1964. My first published stories were in the early 1970's. In the eighties, I placed hundreds of poems and more "literary" stories, reviews, and essays. In the 90's my love for fantasy and science fiction finally started paying off as I started selling genre stories (which included horror and suspense). That was selling for money! The poetry and literary stories for all those years paid in copies in all but two token payment cases. I've studied under a lot of good people in college and in workshops, two that gave me a lot of encouragement at the CSU Imagination Workshop in 1999 were Tim Powers and Karen Joy Fowler. Still, it's easy to get distracted in life -- and I did. I worked on a couple of novel manuscripts and stopped submitting stories to write "my novel" ... and then time passed (like Baen books keeping the manuscript a year, asking for changes, and keeping it for another eight months before passing on it). I've been a musician and song writer performing in garages and coffee shops, painter, an award winning photographer, computer programmer, as well as a farm laborer, tree trimmer, dish washer, house painter, business owner, store manager, retail supervisor and on and on over the years. And now I'm old and settled in and back at it again.