Spirit Falls is a coming-of-age novel set in the late 1950's on the empty and hardscrabble borderland between Michigan's Upper Peninsula and northern Wisconsin. Ricky Belisle is a boy born to first-generation Americans who have migrated north to farm and hold land that cannot be taken away from them. They bring with them the beliefs, manners and stories of the homeland that they have not occupied and in so doing they create a disconnect in Ricky that forces him to begin the exploration that will eventually take him away from the land that has leached into his bones, that has given him the foundation for how he sees the world. Marie Jeanne Charbonneau, "M.J.," a French-Canadian tomboy, is his best, his only, friend, who shows Ricky that the world is wider than he thinks and that much of life takes place in the space between the words. Their relationship sparks the hunt for truth within themselves. The gypsy-like refugee Marina Svetana, green-eyed, black-haired, beautiful and wounded, a fragment of war-torn Europe, arrives like a visitation of the spirit world. Her arrival is the beginning of Ricky's journey. Ricky Belisle, Marie Jeanne Charbonneau and Marina Svetana find themselves on the eve of the winter solstice, the coldest, longest night of the year, set on a course that will last until the spring thaw brings with it a cascade of events that ends with Ricky carrying M.J. in his arms across the Great Bogus Swamp into the teeth of a 100 year Lake Superior storm. He wants only for her to survive this catastrophe and for him to find what it means to be a man. Ricky identifies with the land, the source of his strengths and weaknesses, requiring of him those things that he would not require of himself. He must learn to live with his fear of its darkness, to manage a homeland both harsh and sublime, and learn to leave behind the place both familiar and brutal. Ricky's struggle is to sort out what role women play in his life, how an honorable man treats those who are weaker, and how a young mans knows truth--by what he is told or by what he feels.
About the Author: Robert E. Townsend was born and raised on a farm in northern Wisconsin and writes of a life he has witnessed. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin in 1969 at the height of the Vietnam protests, Townsend flew 135 combat missions in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. In early 1972, he transferred to Berlin, Germany, as a signals intelligence officer, then to the National Security Agency before returning as a war planner at HQ USAFE, Ramstein, Germany. From 1982-1989 he was deputy chief, Air Force Intelligence Agency, counter-deception directorate at CIA. He is among some of the few dozen men in America intimate with the war of ruse and stratagem between the US and the USSR. Slavic on his mother's side, deep-south redneck on the paternal side, his parents managed money poorly and told stories well. Spare, pithy, lasting the duration of a Pall Mall, the tales were meant to entertain and to teach. No one is completely useless; they can always serve as a bad example. His stories and novels arise from family history, fables and stories told around the kitchen table and his own experiences in America's late 20th century ambiguous wars, deceptions and counter-deceptions. Townsend comes from a long line--father and grandfather, great-grandfather--of American soldiers. From his father the lesson was that his people were born fighting and women were mysterious creatures. From his mother he learned that storytellers are to be treasured, but liars are vexing, exhausting and best kept at a distance. From his own experience he found that when liars are armed, crazed and planning Armageddon, ambiguity in matters of war and peace and life and death were the vexations of his century. Fluent in Russian and German with a combat vocabulary in French, the author is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin (BA), studied at Freies Universitat Berlin, and received his MA from Georgetown University. After retirement he turned his attention back to writing, a passion waylaid by life and work. He has since worked steadily on novels and essays. Spirit Falls is the prologue to a trilogy about deception, war and peace in the 20th century in a world of both contrived and actual moral ambiguity. Townsend currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin with his wife, Patrice, and on his family farm in northern Wisconsin.