Foreword

Throughout my writing career there have been many times I sat back from the keyboard and thought, “Nobody will read this crap.” My very kind readers have proven me wrong again and again, and I haven’t worried too much about it for the last five or six years. That said, while I was writing this book, that thought came to me again. I don’t usually do this kind of foreword, but it seemed appropriate this time, so here we are.

There will come a time, (fairly late) in this story, where the average person, from the average town, will sit back in his or her chair and mutter, “Give me a break. Nobody would do that. That kind of town just doesn’t exist.”

I’m not asking you to suspend your disbelief about small town America. I’m asking you to think about it. The vast majority of Americans are raised in towns and cities. For purposes of this reflection, I’m saying there must be four or five hundred souls in a community before it’s called a “town”. Recent census data puts the share of towns in America with fewer than 10,000 population at 9% of the total. Now scale that down to my arbitrary 500 population number, and it would probably be less than two percent, most likely. But to put that in context, that means there are roughly 700,000 people living in very small, isolated towns.

What I’m asking you to do is imagine you live somewhere where you literally know everybody, and everything about them, and they all know you just as well. There’s nothing to do, from the vantage point of the (few) teenagers in town. There are few, if any job prospects. Most young people try to escape. You’ve all seen the movies about the girl who runs away from such a town to go to Hollywood, or Nashville, or New York, where she expects to make her mark and then ends up as a hooker. Think about it. Where do all those hookers come from? Chances are they’re not groomed for the profession for years and then step into what they think of as an upwardly mobile profession. The hooker population comes from women who are desperate to eat, plain and simple.

The census also reports that rural areas are becoming more and more depopulated, as young people migrate to urban areas, seeking to “make their fortune”. It’s reasonable to believe that those left behind may become desperate to find ways out, seeking opportunities denied them where they grew up.

My point is, such small, insulated communities exist. I’m not making them up. I may have taken a little license in terms of the mercenary nature of the “courting” that will be described, but that’s all. Girls in such towns can be desperate to find a man, and desperation is the mother of weird behavior.

All I’m asking you to do is think about the plight of kids who grow up in a tiny place with no real future to offer, if they stay there. And, if there are no resources available to go elsewhere (without resorting to prostitution) then imagine what you might be willing to do to secure a better life for yourself. Or for your child.

Just think about it. Maybe then what I write about won’t seem so bizarre.

Bob

Foreword P.S.

I have tried to write from a female perspective before. I got good feedback on that. In this book, however, I try to write from the viewpoint of three women in particular who have very different personalities, and two or three other women in general. Again, being a man, I have no freaking clue as to whether I’m being reasonable in the way I present these women’s thoughts and reactions.

However ... in that world where, given enough time, a chimpanzee sat at a typewriter could theoretically reproduce the works of Shakespeare, I figure it’s just as possible that I understood these women enough to pull this off.

And, by the way, my proofreader is all woman, and Michelle said I did okay.

Bob

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