An Excerpt from “Life Could Be A Dream”
The summer of 1954 begins a pivotal year in nine-year-old Robby Barnaby’s life. On the last day of school, he breaks his arm sliding into home plate while playing for the fifth graders in an all-star game against the sixth graders.
Baseball is his passion, and Robby excels at it, though he is younger than his classmates. He lives in a new suburb of Los Angeles called Watertown, an idyllic childhood spot with open fields and well-equipped schoolyards.
He and his older brother Cyrus are entrepreneurs, trading coins and selling newspapers. In addition, he works for his teacher, Miss Oliver. He has two younger brothers, six-year-old Stanley, who is frail and sickly, and Glyndon, who turns four in December.
On their annual vacation on Balboa Island, he learns his family is moving to a city across L.A. that offers little for kids to do. Before the move, his mother dies from surgery, leaving him in the care of his abusive father.
Everything in life has become so unreal that Robby dreams of his dead mother. Miss Oliver offers to adopt him, but his father refuses. His new home is a chicken ranch in Orcutt Park, a town with no baseball and a brutal junior high. Robby and Cyrus are miserable, and their younger brothers are lost without their mom. What will happen to these boys?
Learn more by reading Chapter 10 here:
Executive Justice, Re-Animated
I have revised my third (final) novel in the Executive series to reflect the dismal aftermath of Trump’s re-election. The premise of my first version was that America broke up due to red state secession after his defeat. In this one I reverse the script.
An Excerpt from “Camelot Lost”
The 1960s was an idealistic time for America. It also ushered in a profound loss of innocence for that generation.
In 1961, when President John F. Kennedy launched the U.S. effort to put rockets into space, high school senior Max King became interested in the space race, honoring JFK's presidency and lofty goals.
Max meets Jan Rosing in his college zoology class. One thing leads to another and the two transfer to UCLA in 1963.
On November 22, 1963, they hear of JFK's assassination on the radio at school and are heartbroken. Like all of America, they spend the weekend watching TV, and witness Lee Harvey Oswald's murder in real time. They connected their youthful idealism to Kennedy's promising Camelot presidency but move on with their studies.
About “Life Could Be A Dream”
My favorite among all my novels is Life Could be a Dream, named after a popular song from the early fifties. I take a semi-autobiographical look at growing up in the San Gabriel Valley during this era. My main character, nine-year-old Robby Barnaby has his summer lined up: baseball and digging forts with his older brother. An underage fifth grader, on the last day of school he plays in the all-star game of players chosen between the fifth and sixth grades. Trying to score the tying run at home plate he breaks his left wrist, which launches a series of unfortunate events that radically change his life.
The Drug Dealer
My travels gave me a glimpse of a future in which law enforcement blocked legitimate research and imposed the criminal justice system on the disease of addiction. It was a colossal error and only added sixty more years to the century-long failure of the War on Drugs, which remains a war on people. Drugs are the medium of a purely capitalistic system of supply and demand. Draconian laws only raise the risk premium, i.e., the profits for the international drug trade.
Eaton Fire II
In Altadena Mary Jo and I bought our first home in 1983 following the end of my twenty-year first marriage to Julie. It was destroyed in the Easton Fire of 2025. We moved away in 1999. It was sold a few years ago for over one million dollars. I feel sorry for the current owners. It’s not about the money, we also loved that place and installed a special stained-glass window in the master bedroom upstairs. I feel the collective ache of the displaced Altadenans losing prized possessions, pets, cars and their identities.
It is a diverse, bohemian enclave in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains.
Why Do I Write?
What my years of medical practice have given me is the privilege of bearing witness to the lives of thousands of human beings. I saw them at their most difficult moments and observed the quiet courage with which most people confront their mortality. The best way to capture this journey is to write about it.