When Michael and Justin cross paths on a remote bank of the Rio Grande River, they leave their phantoms behind and begin a new life together. Their first summer passes in the hauntingly beautiful desert of Big Bend before fate pushes them in a new direction. Having learned he has a fifteen-year-old son, he arranges for the boy to move to Big Bend. Justin leaves behind his years on the River Road as a park ranger and takes on the responsibilities of a new state park. While both men deal with the challenges of raising a teenage boy, a nightmare from the past comes back to haunt them. Michael faces the threat of losing his medical license and his dream of building a new charity clinic. A tale of human emotion and the magic of love, A Part of My Soul is the sequel to A Song in the Park.
About the Author: I was born on the banks of the Amazon River and raised by a Kaiapo wet-nurse while my mother conducted medical research and taught the Kaiapo children how to play the violin. After growing up with my fellow rain forest natives and a long bout of malaria, I went on to get my degree in rocket science at the University of Uganda (U of U). To this day, I have not gotten a rocket off the ground. Presently, I'm trying to raise money to return to the Amazon to show gratitude to my surrogate mother, whom I've not seen in all these years. She had always wanted a car hood to use as an awning over the door to her hut. I finally found one, on a 1973 Cadillac, in a wrecking yard on a two-lane highway just south of Knoxville, Tennessee. Today, I take great satisfaction in spending time with my wife, in writing, and in telling lies. My earliest memories, at least those that are still fairly clear, are of those initial stages of puberty, when a boy begins to notice things about himself that are changing, when all of a sudden he realizes there's more to his body than a place to put Band-Aids. I noticed these same things about the other boys in the village, as we ran and played and wrestled together and threw sticks at the monkeys. Hmm, I thought . . . what had been a nondescript and easy-to-ignore anomaly had become the center of attention. The other boys my age had these odd shaped, rather impractical danglings between their legs, too, whereas the girls did not! Somewhere in the back of my youthful mind, I knew this curious centerpiece must be used for more than taking aim in a peeing contest. Seems young boys have a way of figuring these things out, especially when one of the girls sits him down and gives him a lecture on the birds and bees. (Why they always seem so far ahead of us, I haven't determined). Still, there were questions.