Excerpt
from Chapter 4: "Courage"
This novel is for people who love language and who love
a good read.
| If you've ever skied
the 31-mile, 50-kilometer
Birkebeiner ski race from
Cable to Hayward, Wisconsin, or if you just love to ski, I think
you'll enjoy reading this
excerpt, which features a
fanciful description of the route through the Seeley Hills, along
with a little mid- and post-race writing instruction.
A story of faith and fidelity,
this novel offers plenty of action and sex (mostly verbal
-- in fact, the entire story is verbal) as the narrator undertakes a
lifelong journey that takes him from a quiet |
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 |
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lake in
the Boundary Waters Canoe Area to his childhood in Cincinnati, his
neighborhood in south Minneapolis, a racetrack in Lexington,
Kentucky (where he purchases a racehorse, a gorgeous black
stallion), a ballroom dance floor (where he struts his stuff), a
cafe on the Cours Mirabeau in Aix-en-Provence (where he discovers his passion for
French, as well as for a certain mysterious green-eyed French
woman), and Lake Superior (where a sudden storm lays his 33-foot
sailboat nearly flat and ice-cold water pours over the rail into the
cockpit), all the while pursuing his quest to find meaning in life
and discover the secret behind the words.
In the process, he meets the love
of his life, creates a good life with her, then fights to prevent
that life from slipping away, and when it finally does, insists that
the loss be on his own terms. |
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The author (not the
narrator) in the Jardin des Tuileries, Paris
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