Bøger af Dixon Long

Tom Harper, a successful businessman, lives in Cleveland Heights with his wife Holly, a talented amateur chef and horsewoman, and their teenage daughter Rachel. Tom has made money in local ventures, and he now plays a lot of tennis and works part time with his father, managing an office products company in downtown Cleveland. He wakes up one morning, to hear Holly say that she can't go on with the marriage. She offers no explanation, and goes out the door a few hours later with her yoga teacher. Tom soon learns that Holly has left him for a woman, a bank manager from Cleveland's West Side named Sibyl Prentiss. Tom is typical of his time and place, a man whose expectations for his wife's performance as mother and homemaker have led to this state of affairs. But at his 30th high school reunion, Tom meets Kathryn Osborne, a beautiful divorcée now living in New York with her teenage daughter. Tom follows Kathryn to New York, but a profound and moving love affair is cut short some months later when Kathryn is diagnosed with cervical cancer. The story follows the tortuous path of Tom's search for self-knowledge, which takes him to California and beyond.

Brother is an exploration of the persistent power of family to shape and liberate the human spirit. It is a story of linked histories, inner conflicts, and adult sibling rivalries. Two brothers with dramatically different career paths find their lifelines crossing in their choice of mates and the complexities they encounter. The story moves through time and across continents, enriched by the author's insightful rendering of Japanese, French, and American settings.

Arthur Hirschman is a talented and ambitious young professor of politics at Mead College in New England, specializing in Japanese government. His graduate school colleague, Victor Malinowski, now an analyst at the National Security Council, persuades Arthur to go to Tokyo to find out who may be collaborating with Sewall Travers, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, to secretly provide advanced aircraft and tactical nuclear weapons to the Japanese self-defense forces. Travers in convinced this step will ultimately lead to the destruction of the network of military alliances around the world, freeing the United States to establish a secure conservative culture in Fortress America. The President is dying, the Vice President resigns under a cloud, and Travers believes he will succeed to the highest office in the land. All the elements of an international and constitutional crisis are present as the story hurtles forward in Tokyo and Washington.

Andy Roberts has lost his wife Beth and their unborn child in a car crash during a bad winter storm. Afterwards he immerses himself in teaching and coaching at Huntsburg High school, trying to forget the horror and the loss. Many months later his son Jeremy leaves high school in his senior year to drive in demolition derbies in small towns across the south. Andy struggles alone with his grief and the emptiness of his home, until Jeremy comes back one night with Karen, who is young, pretty, and pregnant. Jeremy asks if he can leave her with his father in the house on Olive Street until the baby comes. Though he promises to be there for the birth, he never shows up, nor does he write or call. Andy and Karen conclude that something terrible has happened. After the baby arrives, they settle into an unexpected domesticity that inflames Andy's vanished passion, and in a summer rainstorm the dream becomes real. They embark on a sea of ignorance and domestic bliss until the day when Jeremy comes back-a paraplegic in a wheel chair.

After failing to change U.S. global security policy by clandestinely providing secret nuclear technology to Japan, former Secretary of Defense Sewall Travers has barely avoided a Congressional inquiry. He has resettled in New York and established himself as a hedge fund manager. The stain of the so-called Stealth affair has begun to fade in most memories, but Travers continues to feel the shame and disgrace of the event. So when he is unexpectedly called by the director of a small non-profit organization and invited to act as a private negotiator to reduce the tensions between China and Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea, he reacts positively in the hope and expectation that a success could restore his reputation and good name. Travers flies to Tokyo under the cover of an investor seeking opportunities in prospective undersea petroleum deposits near the islands. In Tokyo, his interest in Japanese ceramics leads him to visit the Matahachi gallery, where he meets the owner, Mieko Matahachi. They make an immediate romantic connection, and their relationship develops rapidly. Meanwhile, he contacts the official in Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs who is responsible for the Senkaku/Diaoyu issue, Chiaki Matsumura. They meet to discuss his intention to open a dialogue and begin negotiations with the Chinese authorities. He also meets Kazuko Sumida, an investigative reporter who is interested in helping to find a resolution of the dispute. Kazuko does some research on Ms. Matsumura's background, and finds that she was born to a woman in the family Travers stayed with during a summer internship in Japan during his high school years. Given the name of the mother and dates of his stay, Travers begins to understand there is a possibility that Chiaki Matsumura could be his daughter. The story moves on to Beijing, where Travers and Matsumura meet with the Chinese, and then to Taiwan where they arrange with the commander of a military air unit to be helicoptered to the site of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. The plot thickens!

Harald Hanson becomes president of a small Ohio college while still young and inexperienced. Stebbins College has built its curriculum around environmental issues: Harald is recruited on the strength of his popular book about the environment, Greening Up. Once in office, he views the job as a larger version of the Poly Sci department he formerly headed. But Harald misunderstands the views and expectations of the faculty, particularly those of ambitious department chairs and senior professors who are determined to bring him down. In the midst of this upheaval his wife, Clarissa, leaves to pursue a theatrical career in New York. Then his brother informs him that their father is ill and hospitalized in northern Michigan. Also, Harald fears that a careless indiscretion with his secretary, Sarah, may become public. His troubles seem to be out of control and headed for disaster until an unexpected invitation arrives. A scheduled speaker withdraws from an important international meeting in Paris, and Harald is asked to substitute. He accepts the invitation and asks Sarah to go with him. When Sarah shows up in London with her boyfriend, the diving coach from the college, Harald knows he has been duped and he flees to Paris. At the meeting he encounters Chicory Higgins, an attractive and competent Native American woman, and he stumbles into a new fantasy. And so it goes, with twists and turns to the very last page. As the cover image suggests, the story is a total immersion experience.

These stories are arranged by the age of the principal characters from youngest to oldest. Time Zones follows the cross-country love affair of a young couple, one of whom lives and works in New York and the other in San Francisco. Although they are unsuited for each other, under the spell of the affair they mismanage their paths and plans, leading to a richly appropriate outcome. In Still Life Tom, an artist, meets Kate, a photographer, at an all-night diner. They both recognize their complementary interests and begin an affair. Then Kate discovers that breast cancer, which she thought she had conquered, has returned. She confronts wrenching alternatives about her treatment and the continuation of her love affair with Tom. The drama moves back and forth between Kate's and Tom's point of view. First Born chronicles the experience of a widower whose only son decamps after high school to drive old cars in demolition derbies across the south. The son returns unexpectedly with a girl friend and a new baby. When he leaves without them soon after, his father becomes emotionally entangled with the girl and faces a morally ambiguous choice. In the novella Weekend in the Luberon, Freddy, a writer and intellectual, tells how a diamond necklace mysteriously disappeared from the possessions of his father-in-law at the time of death. Freddy's wife Susan is certain it was intended as a gift to her. The story is driven by Susan's relentless greed and Freddy's excessive timidity. Susan believes that her brother David took the necklace, and she is determined to retrieve it. Freddy resists and tries to dissuade her. Nevertheless Susan assembles a group of self-interested friends to help her recover the necklace. The action is set in the south of France, rich with the colors and aromas of Provence. The actors include Werner, a sardonic and light-fingered Swiss ski instructor who has amorous designs on Susan, and Inga, Werner's drop-dead gorgeous Swedish wife. Susan's cousin Chris, a tinkerer and manufacturer, insults everyone and bungles his assignment, leading to a tragic and sobering outcome. The last two stories, The Perfect Glaze and Harry Waiting, evoke the emotionally challenging questions we face at the end of a partner's life and our own.

It's the spring of 2008, and the distant rumblings of a global economic crisis are barely audible on the peaceful campus of Mead College in rural western Massachusetts. The author has assembled some forty characters from five previous novels and one novella. Some are the faculty, spouses and administrators who form the personnel of the college. Others are financial professionals in New York and San Francisco, loyal to Mead through experience and commitment. Still others are friends, family and lovers Some live and work in the south of France or in metropolitan Tokyo. A few are in their thirties, others in their seventies. In character they range from driver to dreamer, from practical to profligate, from dependable to duplicitous. Their connection with Mead College is the common thread that brings and binds them together. While the nation's financial system is about to founder, the college has also run through its resources, and its president is slipping into senile dementia, unable either to recognize the situation or to do anything about it. The story swings around two key individuals. Henry Cornwall, dean of the faculty, sees what may happen and does everything in his power to avert it. Sewall Travers, investment banker, will help if it contributes to his goal-to become president of the college. Others assume that the college will somehow survive and allow them to achieve their personal objectives. Quentin Royster wants to turn the institution in a conservative direction. Arthur Hirschman aims to grow an Asian Studies program that he has founded and fostered, while continuing his rise to stardom as a student and interpreter of Japan. Talented and perceptive women have important roles. Monique de Granmont rules over her French family with both toughness and tenderness. Caroline Walker stands behind the dean-and sometimes in front of him-as the college is shaken by the failing economy. Debra Zane finds success in the venture capital business; Inga Olsson does what she must to survive, and what the courage of her conviction demands of her. Through it all, love and ambition, as always, drive the ultimate outcomes.