Along A Tangent Line (ePub)

If you enjoy reading the kind of books that extol the virtues of wizards or dragons; murder mysteries, thrillers or are of the self-help genre. If you seek the supernatural or the occult in your reading as a pastime or as a lifestyle; then Please DO NOT read this book. I would rather you spend whatever monies you would have used to procure this e-book on one of those fancy flavored coffees or some other enjoyment rather than waste your time reading Along a Tangent Line.

However, if you enjoy a simply story: a fiction. One filled with drama, romance and levity along with social dialogue: the mundane and the serious. Then perhaps this book might be an enjoyable experience for you.

Since I obviously hold a bias toward this book I shall begin first by criticizing the work. It has been suggested by the few close and not so close associates whom I have challenged to read this book; that the story begins at an unbearably slow pace. I believe the description most often used has been: 'it just doesn't grab the reader'. OK, I will concede that fact if it pleases people. But in my concession I argue that life, more often than not, adopts a similar manner of monotony and sameness. In fact that is the point in why I authored the beginning of the book the way I have.

Still, if you can muddle your way past the slow beginning, past the oft times drawn out characterizations and the vague attempt at eloquent prose. I believe then; and it is here I opine a bias; you may find a substance to the story that both entertains and educates. Provided one is open and willing enough to exercise the imagination.

Our setting is the fertile Sacramento, San Joaquin River Delta of Central California. To tell its tale the book uses the current political and social dilemma of water allocation, urban sprawl and economic disfranchisement which confront the people of this region. But on a much broader scale the story is about life and how it is to be lived. The story is about the hundred million seconds of one's existence. It is about love and betrayal, friendship and greed, about disillusionment and redemption.

And finally it has been suggested the book tends to proselytize some agenda. On this argument I do not agree. The book is a fiction and like all fictions there is some truth and some untruth immersed in the pages. The characters' lives are portrayed openly, honestly: there are no hidden meanings beyond the telling of a tale. Whatever ideas the reader may come away with from having experienced the story is theirs alone.