The Truth Beyond Current Events

As you already know, the idea – or at least the setting – for “The Truth Beyond the River” has been in my head for over forty years. When I finally started writing it, the various characters began talking to me, filling me in on their backgrounds and painting a picture in my mind of who they each were. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll draw you a word-sketch of each of these people.

Today, though, I wanted to circle around to how God must have wanted me to publish this book now, how it relates to current events.

 Tommy, the main character, came home from the Vietnam War haunted by visions and nightmares. When this story takes place in 1974, the medical community called that Shell Shock and was just beginning to realize that it was a real thing, that war vets, as well as others suffering extreme trauma, can’t just “get over it”. That what they are experiencing needed to be understood and treated.

Of course, today, we call this PTSD, Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. Recently, it has been studied extensively as more and more people are reporting these symptoms.  

When I finished writing this book three years ago, I thought that then would be the perfect time to publish it as PTSD was getting a lot of press.

Other news from that time revolved around the proposed oil pipeline which was to run from northwestern North Dakota to Illinois. Groups of Native Americans protested this as the pipeline would run through their lands and there was great concern over potential leaks, in additional to defiling certain sacred lands.    

With the injustices committed against the Native Americans in my book, again, I thought it would be perfect timing.

But no, the time to publish this story was now. No, there is no pandemic in the book, but there is a fair amount of racism against not only the local Native Americans but even the reporter who has a Spanish-American heritage.

As I was going through my book one last time, another theme in the story hit me in the face – appropriate choice of words there. Police brutality. I never meant to write about that, yet there it is, in all its wrongfulness.

What I want you to remember though, first and foremost, is that no matter what a person’s race, nationality, religion, occupation or whatever other slot you want to put them in, there are good people and bad people in each of those categories.

Within the pages of “The Truth Beyond the River”, you will find some really good people and some really bad ones. It doesn't matter what color, creed or occupation those bad people belong to, I don’t like the things they do and I hope you don’t either. But then, don’t label the rest of the people – the good ones – based on the actions of others.

One last reminder. The book is only out as an e-book right now. The paper version will be available to order in another week. If you are the type of person who throws their book across the room if they don’t like something that is going on in the story, don’t throw your e-reader or other electronic device. Wait until you have the paperback.