Exposure

by James Lockhart Perry

No matter how hard he tries, Sam Spaulding can't find the off-switch to his life. First there's Lydia who doesn't care a whit how sick—and sick and tired—he is. Then there's Rudy who can't get out of his own way far enough to let his talents show up. And then there's Sheri who pulls the little waif trick on Sam and cons him into giving a damn. Just how far will these four go for love? Read on.

ebook

First published August 21, 2011

About the author

James Lockhart Perry was a Texan born on Valentine's Day in 1892 into the wilds and woolies of East Texas. Daddy Jim, as he came to be known, never worked the oilfields that erupted all around and became so potent a symbol of the crude, brash, lawless state the rest of us recognize. Instead, he patiently farmed the rice fields, married the fine-looking Missouri-bred schoolteacher Dora Mae, and built a beautiful yellow house in the tiny hamlet of Markham for his three lovely daughters Adrienne Lavonne, Audrey Louvelle, and Anita Lorraine. He also built a legend in his lifetime for tireless inner strength and placid outer humility.

So the author's use of Daddy Jim's name for a pseudonym serves as homage as much as anything to the towering gentle spirit of that pioneer and his brave people. The only historical connection Daddy Jim and the author share is that Daddy Jim died on the author's twelfth birthday, thirty-three days before John Fitzgerald Kennedy set off with Jackie of the pink pillbox hat for Dallas. And the fact that both author and rice farmer have loved Daddy Jim's granddaughter to distraction.

The smartest thing the author ever did, apart from forcing the granddaughter to marry him, was to buy her a camera. Since then the couple has stretched the meandering, shutterbugging progression of their lives around the globe, until twenty years ago when they finally settled down on the beach south of Los Angeles, California. Where the surf rolls in with the same steady, timeless rhythm of the rice waving in the breeze of Daddy Jim's long vanished fields.

Reviews

[Carol Kean · Rating 5 out of 5]

At his age, all rental companies won't even loan him a car. In his favorite photo of him with his buddies, he's the last guy still alive. What's left? Sam intends to let cancer send him the way of all his buddies, but his wife has other plans.

Her plans include adopting a loser of a would-be photographer and his girlfriend, then launching a rescue mission when (no surprise) they get in trouble.

What good is a 70-yr-old man wearing a colonoscopy bag? You'd be surprised...