After twenty years in the ad game, two marriages and two divorces, and his kids grown up now, Jack can at last resume his Whitman-Thoreau-Kerouac dream of seeking self-knowledge in the Great American Mythscape. At last he can return to the wildflowers in a mayonnaise jar lifestyle he still cherishes from his youth in the '60s. And then he meets Céline: thirtyish, girl-friend beautiful, PhD educated, and a divorced mother of two small children with whom Jack instantly bonds. Midlife crisis never met a more tantalizing tender trap-but Jack hangs tough. He explains to the woman he loves that his journey into rural solitude for a life of simplicity and contemplation is something he absolutely must do-until his daughter calls. Jessie phones Friday evening to tell him she's leaving LA and her boyfriend and is coming back home to Miami-Monday morning. Oh, and she's pregnant. Céline graciously opens her home to Jack and his daughter; in spite of his anguish at missing the opportunity of his "journey into the meaning of life," Jack and his daughter move in Monday morning. The two-family shuffle begins (actually four-family, including Céline's former, Jack's two, and the nascent fourth), and everybody is dealt a new definition of "home." It's not easy, particularly with Jessie around. Preternaturally smart, funny, quick of lip, she and her father still have "issues" that go 'way back. Eminently likable and well meaning, Jessie can also be quite self-absorbed and thoughtless, as Céline and her two kids soon find out. At the same time that he wonders why he is starting his third family, Jack further slips into parental mode with a young copywriter he mentors at the ad agency; Jeremy is the boss's problematic nephew, fresh out of college and a royal pain in the ads. And then there's office politics and the Machiavellian vice president who's trying to include Jack in a scheme to steal the agency's top client to anchor a new, competitive agency. We learn all of this and more in flashbacks from a meditation retreat center on a snowbound mountain in Vermont. We learn about the disaster that finally drove Jack to break with Céline and family and career (and sunny Miami) to become caretaker and solitary winter resident of Sky Meadow-solitary except for two mongrel dogs with whom he shares cozy accommodations in an ancient railroad passenger car, the "Continental Drift Express." There are also flashbacks to Jack's two failed marriages, to the '60s in the Haight-Ashbury, a hippie commune in the Pacific Northwest, and a night of slapstick and real pain at the red-neckest bar in the Florida Everglades. The Continental Drift Express may be going nowhere on its cement-block foundation, but Jack's inner journey goes from decades-old flashbacks to millennial flash-forwards. There are spiritual episodes as well as philosophical-psychological aha's, all leading to intriguing new visions of both grinning and the dark.
About the Author: A native of Sarasota, Florida, William Troffer earned a BA in English from the University of Florida, Gainesville, and an MA in Creative Writing from Stanford University. He lives in New York City where he is working on his next novel.