Böcker av D Ray Withrow

Imagine."Imagine there's no heaven. It's easy if you try."Only... it's not to be the wistful hopefulness of John Lennon's lyrics. Imagine instead...It all falls away in front and to the right of you at a dizzying, frantic pace, rushing like a roller coaster falling from hell further into the abyss until it jolts you to a halt where you find yourself standing.Standing on cold frozen ground, cold wind swirling about you, people dressed in black as a small white coffin is lowered slowly into the frozen hole just there, in front of you.Indeed, "imagine there's no heaven. It's easy if you try."Imagine yourself three decades later, the sadness of that day worn into the lines on your face, weathered slow grief on display if you only know to look for it. Imagine a voice, the voice of a loved one- your father- whispering to you. In one ear, he whispers, "we need to find him." It doesn't sound all that crazy as you roll it around in the small reservoir of what remains of your hope. After all, Dad lives in the whisperstream. He hears things, sees things you cannot. And he says it is possible that your stillborn child's soul may have survived the death of its body. He says it may still be alive in another child, somewhere in this world around you. It's crazy, I know, but you think about it. And you try to decide whether to believe, and whether to go in search.Imagine.In his strange hallucinatory tale, D. Ray Withrow advances the fantastic story of a father and son- a dead Dad and his boozy boy- negotiating the relationship they neglected in the living years. Turn the page and visit their world, dance the dance of the electrons that is their lives.

"HURLED INTO ETERNITY. MRS. M.J. PERSON SHOOTS HER BRAINS OUT THIS MORNING." The sensational newspaper headline is followed by one of the most sensational murder trials in Memphis criminal history.The true story: early on a Tuesday morning in September 1890, forty-five-year-old Mary Jane Person is found lying face up and stone-cold dead behind her home near the south gate of Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis, Tennessee. She has horrendous wounds to both sides of her head. There is a bloody pistol at her feet. She threatened self-harm many times before; looks like she finally succeeded. Her death is ruled a suicide by the coroner's inquest.Not so fast. Her funeral is interrupted by Memphis police, her casket taken to the family kitchen where an autopsy is performed. Her funeral resumes but her burial is denied, and later that evening, her fifty-nine-year-old husband William is hauled off to jail for her murder. The two had quarreled recently over a letter found in his coat pocket, a heartsick effusion written to a nineteen-year-old neighbor he was infatuated with. The charge is first degree murder, punishable by hanging. Uxoricide. One hundred and thirty years later, the question still lingers. Did he or didn't he? Who killed Mary Jane Person?