Goodreads asked Hank Parker:

What mystery in your own life could be a plot for a book?

Hank Parker At first I thought I knew what he meant. “I can’t take it anymore,” he’d said to me. I figured it was the cancer. For years I’d been close to the man, now well into his 70’s with only months to live, just a husk of a man at this stage, who looked more like one of the withered crops in his fields than the robust farmer I used to know. I comforted him as best I could.

Then there was a noise from the adjacent kitchen, where the man’s wife was preparing dinner. I saw the old farmer’s face flinch. Was it more than just physical pain? His wife had always been hard on him, but lately it had gotten worse as her characteristic lack of sympathy had metastasized into a cold contempt for his complaints.

“I can’t take it anymore,” he’d said. Was it just the cancer? And what more could I have done? That’s the mystery that haunts me to this day.

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