The Road Runner / An American Odyssey

 

    The Road Runner is a memoir detailing the life, loves and times of John Stover.

 

    The story is loosely based on Homer's Odyssey entailing the search described by Homer almost 2,700 years ago. The themes are similar-the quest for identity, the search for love, the value of hearth and family and the continual challenge of being true to one's values and ideals. Many of the temptations encountered by Odysseus are placed before the title character. He meets the one-eyed Cyclops, is tempted by Circe and Calypso and walks among the lotus-eaters.

 

    The story begins with painfully descriptive details of the author's harsh home life. Mr. Stover, the fourth of seven children, describes the family dynamics and how they play out as dysfunction slowly and easily manifests itself in its various forms in all the children. His father, a self-made man, is also an alcoholic, sexual compulsive and rage-a-holic. The author, through his revelations, points out sexual dysfunction as a Stover family legacy, passed from generation to generation. Tracing the family genealogy back to the infamous triangle of John Alden and Priscilla-the very woman who snubbed Governor Miles Standish's amorous advances, the author recounts what may well be the beginnings of the Stover family’s sexual dysfunction. Tales of other, closer relatives running afoul of the law as a result of their sexual compulsions are also chronicled in great detail.

 

   The author introduces us to his brother, who he calls Thor, the god of Thunder and Gloom. The brother six years older, tortures, beats and molests the author. Thor is six years older, locking the youngster for hours at a time in a dark closet. The younger brother has his arm broken three times before age fifteen.

 

    Mr. Stover spent his youth working at his father’s hotel; the West Elm Hotel, in Brockton, Massachusetts, where he observed men from the Brockton VA Hospital. His writing is culled from these dysfunctional men. Several stories tell of the seven, eight and nine-year-old author finding men at the hotel who've died as a result of an overdose, accidental death or suicide. The author found his first corpse at age seven. He also relates a hilarious tale of an elderly mother who kills her daughter only to hide out at the hotel where the Brockton Police apprehend her. The Hotel years are similar to a page from Police Gazette pulp magazines, the very same fodder that his father was so fond of reading.

 

    At fifteen, Mr. Stover was involved in a bizarre accident   that took the life of an elderly neighbor. This story of an errant golf ball is told in a black, comedic manner, shedding more light on the family's preoccupation with secrecy and denial. It is revealed that the author's mother had a long-lost brother who had been committed to life in prison for a murder, a fact not known until after her untimely death. The author steadfastly maintains his innocence in the golf ball incident.

 

   The author attended Boston University, where he majored in pre-med, and the University of California at Los Angeles, where he concentrated on English literature and writing. He was forced to leave Boston University after waking up restrained in a hospital strait jacket, having run naked through the winter streets of Boston on Christmas Eve, while on a bad LSD trip. This episode pretty much ended any thoughts of an academic or medical career.

 

     In 1974, Mr. Stover spent a year hitch-hiking around the south, working at various odd jobs, as well as hopping freight cars, guessing astrological signs for money, selling blood in addition to working for local moonshiners and drug dealers. The author gives a lesson in "instant rapport," a skill developed during his journeys as a professional hitchhiker.

 

    There are many touching and humorous scenes as the author encounters some very kind, some incredibly sick but mostly dangerous drivers and rides. In six months Mr. Stover logged over 20,000 miles on his thumb, sleeping under bridges, accepting the hospitality of strangers and living by his wits. Today, this living situation would be described as homeless. In 1974, it was merely living "On the Road."

 

    In 1975, Mr. Stover moved to Nantucket Island where he worked for the Nantucket Historical Association. He lectured the public on early American whaling, becoming an expert on scrimshaw and Herman Melville. The author gives a lesson in the meaning of a "Nantucket Sleigh Ride." He tells a touching story in which he plays an academic game with Felix Pappalardi, the soon-to-be murdered rock star, who wrote the song, "Nantucket Sleigh Ride," with the band Mountain. Later, the author worked at Nantucket Cottage Hospital, where he continued his medical training, driving an ambulance and attending the critically ill and elderly. Several stories of the men and women the author encounters while working as a paramedic will move the reader to tears. Eventually, the author is exiled from the island, his dog poisoned, his house taken away, his girlfriend walks out and he is fired from his job. Stover tells of several Indian legends, one promising a return to the Island. The author does return, ten years later, a changed man, and encounters many of his old friends, fulfilling the legend.

 

    In 1976, Mr. Stover moved to California and worked as a personal assistant to Edwin W. Pauley, Chairman of the Board of Regents, for the University of California and Treasurer of the Democratic Party. There are several history lessons given in this chapter, including a little known fact about Harry Truman's Presidency, which the author uncovers firsthand. The author also meets several presidents. At one presidential meeting, a Jimmy Carter function, the author is so drunk that he is thrown out by the Secret Service, only to be driven home by the President's son, Chip Carter.

 

    The author also worked at several of the local area hospitals, including UCLA Medical Center and St. John's Hospital. Mr. Stover remained four years with Edwin W. Pauley, spending summers on his private Island in Hawaii. Some of the guests who spent time on Coconut Island were Jerry Brown, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, and Meredith Willson, composer of "The Music Man." He also worked for several foreign ambassadors and for the twice-awarded academy award-winning director Lewis MilestoneThe author discloses an amusing story about Meredith Willson's beginnings as first flute for John Phillip Sousa, of  "Stars and Stripes" fame.

 

    The author tells of his eventual attempts at sobriety and includes the reader in a lovely and heartwarming tale in the giving of his daughter's Indian name. The little girl becomes "Two Hawks" in a primeval forest encounter, a story that will undoubtedly stay with the reader.

 

    In 1984, Mr. Stover entered the world of fashion. Working for several international clothing companies, winning several awards, achieving considerable success and acclaim. In 1989, he opened his own concern,  City Garment Finishers, a garment manufacturing company, which employed as many as fifty workers.

 

     In 1996, the author returned home to bury his father. Prior to his father's death, after the author had become sober and founded his own business, the author and his father made their peace. The father's pride in the once ne'er-do-well son is evident. The elder Stover leaves a great deal of money to the previously wayward son, causing a civil war to break out between the author and his siblings as they try to block his inheritance. The author tells of a last offering given to his father as the deceased lay in his casket. The author sends his father to a better world with provisions only the patriarch could appreciate.

 

     Two stories involve the author burying several close friends. Tales of Grateful Dead fans and bald women with cancer on a beach are images that will linger in the minds of the reader. The author tells of his connection with  "The Death Club," a fascinating, underground association of celebrity-death guessing participants.

 

    Eventually, the author meets a woman who he takes to Paris. His heart and common sense are left on the banks of the Seine. Stover recapitulates a fascinating story about Napoleon's height complex that is woven into a tale concerning a five-star restaurant and muddy sneakers.

 

    The author returns from Europe, a man in love and re-addicted to the very drugs that have continually jeopardized his life, beginning a four-year slide. Eventually, the author loses his girlfriend, his business, the trust of his family and his self respect.

 

    In 1998, Mr. Stover, recovering from his personal crisis, sold everything he owned to concentrate on his first love, writing. He chronicles the fight back to regain sobriety and usefulness. Slowly, as a result of dedication to his abstinence, the author reclaims his life and body. In the past fifteen years, Mr. Stover has written one memoir and seven novels.

 

   His personal Odyssey, The Road Runner is his first book. It was written in six weeks. This book is available in print at any book store.

 

     In his first book, the author takes us on a journey of love, loss, pain and joy, delivering the reader to a destination of fatherhood, redemption, peace and acceptance. Join us on the author’s journey towards hope, his quest for knowledge, his trek into insanity and finally, ultimately, his arrival upon the threshold of serenity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

    Common Cents / A Civil War Story

 

    The author’s second book, "Common Cents," is a Civil War novel that mirrors the homeless situation of modern America. "Common Cents" is a futuristic tale about a second Civil War paralleling the American Civil War and its issues of slavery and bondage with the conditions of the homeless that exist today in modern America. The author considers the homeless problem in this country a National disgrace.

 

      Common Cents / A Civil War Story

 

                                               Common Cents Summary

 

     The story is set during two time periods; the very near future and also begins six years before the Civil War. The action begins as tension escalates between the unnamed Narrator and his nemesis, a street person called Suds. Suds blames his little dog's death on the Narrator and has sworn revenge. As the plot unfolds, the Narrator's great-great grandfather, a Virginia slave-owner named Clay Dante Logan, is questioning his internal politics. He owns slaves. The Narrator also doubts his own priorities as they pertain to the homeless that barely exist outside the front door of his clothing factory.

 

     The War between the States is heating up and Clay knows that he must take a stand, just as the Narrator knows that no good man can stand idly by and watch innocent men, women and children die from neglect.

 

    Clay is a graduate of West Point and an educated man. His journals are called, "Clay's Ways." They reflect his inner thoughts as well as mirroring the events of the day. He quotes many sources, from Thoreau, Emerson and Schopenhauer, to Melville, Poe and Flaubert.

 

     The Narrator owns a garment-manufacturing factory. The reader follows a large apparel order from inception to shipping. The internal mechanics of the clothing business are revealed within the modern story. The apparel-manufacturing narrator closely identifies with his ancestor and their paths seem to mirror one another as each wrestles with their own humanitarian sensibilities. As Suds's guerrilla tactics increase, the tensions between the North and the South grow stronger.

 

    In the beginning of the story, Clay defends his Plantation’s (named

JusticEstates) policies, but as the war drags on, it begins to take its toll and he begins to change his thinking. Clay’s wife has died and he immerses himself in the upcoming conflict, preferring the lunacy of war to the emotional pain he wishes to avoid.

 

    On the day the Narrator is shipping one of the largest orders of his professional career, Suds and his band of marauders attack the plant, which employs about thirty-five people. The Narrator is forced into action, shooting and killing two of Suds's cohorts. Suds is critically injured. He crawls out of the factory and into the homeless camp run by a three hundred plus pound black woman named Mama Pajama.

 

    Mama has many powerful political allies. She is a passionate, imposing woman. Suds dies the following day and Mama swears vengeance, setting into motion the Second American Civil War.

 

    Promises of free food and clothing draw a crowd of 10,000 people. Mama's Army becomes the first flank of the People's Army. This homeless army is joined by a band of stoned-out street junkies led by a three-time loser named Ari the Aryan. Ari is avenging his dead girlfriend Lindy, a recent victim of a drug overdose. The streets are overrun with a deadly combination of unusually powerful heroin. Ari is stoned on this Mexican Brown and feels he has nothing left to live for. Ari (a Vietnam Vet, with a deadly history) becomes a killing machine. He leads the Kamikaze Homeless Brigade into battle against the National Guard, Federal soldiers and tactical police.

 

    Single-handed, Ari kills a dozen of the National guardsmen who have been firing on the unarmed homeless. Later, he slits the throat of Deputy Police Chief, Alden Jameson, a megalomaniac killer. Grant Terry, Channel 13 News, covers from above the action. Terry is a foxhole style reporter who made his name in the trenches of Vietnam. Unwittingly, after stopping Jameson’s carnage, Ari becomes a hero, a national figure and media celebrity.

 

    A wealthy socialite and communications giant named Willa Wharton Phillips III leads the third flank of the homeless army into battle against the Federal forces. Willa is the keynote speaker at the Biltmore Hotel, where many of her friends are gathered for a weekend of Gray Panther activities. Willa leads her aged Gray Panther comrades against the federal soldiers, realizing her true political destiny.

 

    In effect, the gray poncho-clad homeless, the rag-tag junkie army and the Gray Panthers battling against the blue tactical police and the National Guard, become the Second American Civil War. Like the Battle of Gettysburg, the Army attacks in three flanks and like Gettysburg the casualty list is severe. Over three thousand are killed. It is the Blue vs. the Gray. The battle occurs in the rain, in Pershing Park, across from the Biltmore Hotel.

 

    As the conflict between the homeless and the Federal soldiers rages, Clay writes of his own inner battles. He fights at Gettysburg alongside one of his sons. He finds his God and buries a son. He visits Dante’s Inferno and learns the true nature of God's will. He agonizes over his wife's death and tends to another son who is seriously injured in the war.

 

    By the end of the Civil War, Clay has changed his politics, makes his peace with God and comes to an understanding with his former slaves. Clay has a vision in a cave where he begins to bury his past and accept his future. After the war, Clay marries again, raising a second family.

Ari and the Narrator go to Washington, DC where they meet the President, a humane man who is still searching for his political identity. President Andrew Wendell Jackson has been instinctively seeking his own inner compass and after a massive demonstration on the Washington Common, he realizes his political destiny, becoming the  "People‟s President."

 

    Together, Ari and the President conceive of a grassroots program called "Common Cents." By the end of the novel, programs of assistance and rehabilitation, both from the private sector and Federal funding are available to every homeless and indigent man, woman or child who need it.

 

    The story ends with Clay an old man looking back on his life. He reminisces about the Civil War, peacetime, child rearing, his two marriages, the death of children and the nature of man in general.

 

    At the novel’s end, we learn the fates of the Narrator, Ari the Aryan, Mama, Suds, Alden Jameson and the other cast of colorful characters. The story ends with an optimistic and promising ending and suggests several ways in which the homeless might eventually get assistance.

 

    This book is available on Kindle under John H. Stover.

 

 

"In-Sight,"

 

 

    "In-Sight," the author’s third book is a new-age, science fiction story about a dysfunctional time-traveler who is able to journey in and out of his own life--past and future. The time-trekker is also able to "jump" into distant carriers of the family bloodline--inhabiting the bodies of the descendants of his past as well as the heirs of his future.

 

     The author has taken the popular concept of time-traveling and added his own unique vision of cross-addiction, genealogical molding and familial balance. The reader will long remember the characters that weave in and out of time during the time-traveler’s journey.

 

    A Zen-type approach to destiny, a Christian sensitivity towards forgiveness and a futuristic bent regarding time and space, combine to bring the reader headlong into an absorbing and harrowing tale of time-twists and family developments that will both haunt and fascinate.

 

    This book is available on Kindle under John H. Stover.

 

 

      In-Sight / Summary

 

    "In-Sight," is a new-age, science fiction story about a dysfunctional time-traveler who is able to journey in and out of his own life; both past and present. This time-trekker is also able to "jump" into distant ancestors; descendants of the past and heirs to the future. Once the time traveler learns how to time travel, he is unable to stop, experiencing disastrous health effects, family problems as well as personal and financial difficulties. The parallels to drug addiction are intentional.

 

    The time traveler cannot be seen or heard by others as he inhabits his host body, only observe. Hence the title In-Sight. The time traveler’s journeys are marked by the smell of "peaches in summertime." It is this scent that alerts the time traveler to another time traveler’s presence, such as when his mother and he are time traveling to the same time-destination from different points in time.

 

     In-Sight is a sort of time-traveling as therapy book. In the opening paragraph, the time traveler, Paul Stone, learns that his mother has committed suicide, but in doing so, she has also left him the key to a great family secret; the secret of time traveling.

 

    The Stones are a unique family who list among their descendents; Michel de Nostredame later known as Nostradamus, Herbert George Wells, and Taylor Caldwell. All time travelers in their own time. One of the absolute karmic rules of time traveling is that only one member of a family can hold the secret at any given time. Otherwise disastrous results may occur, such as transpired with the death of Nostradamus’ first wife and children, victims of parallel time traveling. The secret can only be shared after death.

 

   I would also like to mention perhaps the most important aspect of the book... This book is a sort of time-traveling as therapy tome. Aside from that, on one trip when the time traveler goes into the future, there is no host body for him to occupy. He is a formless soul, floating throughout the cosmos. When he does return to the present, he comes to the conclusion that ...

 

     There is no future.

 

    He realizes that even though technology is advancing at such a rapid rate, that time travel should be in our grasp within the next century or so, there has never been evidence of a time traveler. No one came back to stop Hitler or meet Jesus. And why is that? Because we will destroy ourselves before we reach that technology. A sobering thought, I assure you and a completely original one, as far as I know.

 

    On one journey into the distant past, Paul Stone meets Jesus Christ Himself, and learns a lesson in forgiveness. Jesus speaks directly to the time traveler and tells him that his mother is now with God and Paul must forgive his mother, as God surely has.

 

    Another trip has him seeing his unrelenting father as a young man. He sees his father on a day where he revels in his children and he remembers one of the lessons of the sea, instilled by his father. He goes on to recognize what forces shaped the older man and learns to forgive an unforgiving father.

 

    One revealing journey takes the time traveler back to the moment of his birth where he discovers another hidden family secret, a secret which heretofore had only been hinted at, never before realizing his true place in the family.

 

    One journey demonstrates to the traveler that sex is such an integral part of his upbringing; it actually may have saved his life as a young boy.

 

    On another, he goes back to his boyhood camp, where he was the victim of an older, bullying, abusive camp mate. He learns to forgive the boy, eventually seeing that the older boy was a victim as well.

 

     He sees his father go off on the fateful boat trip that will end his life. He realizes that his mother had the power to stop the father’s last boat ride, but she did not.

 

    In still another, he sees his mother as a beautiful young woman beside a pristine brook; her disastrous ending years in front of her. It is beside the banks of this green river that young Paul is taught a valuable lesson about being true to the soul’s real purpose. His mother teaches the young boy the old Native American legend of the "Wolf of the dark and the wolf of the light." All warriors will have two opposing wolves within them. Paul learns that wolf of the dark will wither and die when you stop feeding it. A valuable lesson that goes on to affect him from that moment.

 

    The time traveler travels back to the day that made him a junior high school legend. A day where an improvisational joke during a school play cemented his reputation as, "The Renaissance Man."

 

    One journey has the time traveler reliving a lost love. He realizes he would have given up his life for love. The time traveler re- experiences a night of love making in Paris that rivals any other he has ever known. He compares the love making with his old lover to entering the house you grew up in; warm, familiar and comfortinOn one trip, Paul Stone discovers a karmic loophole within the time traveling by-laws. On several occasions, he will be able to communicate from the future. He tries to warn his brother not to take that last car ride, he speaks to a boyhood friend who is about to be crushed beneath the wheels of a semi-truck, and he warns a favorite elderly neighbor not to kill himself. To his dismay, he learns the past cannot be changed, even with direct intervention.

 

    On one illuminating journey, Paul Stone sees himself in the throes of his heroin addition, reliving the horror of his previous lifestyle. As the future Paul succumbs to the rush of the heroin, he must ask himself if he has relapsed, after re-experiencing the drug all those years before. Powerless, he watches as he makes that fateful mistake that will land him in prison for several years.

 

    One journey takes Paul back to the days, following the tragic aftermath of his brother’s untimely death. Paul relives a childhood friendship with Hoffy, his best friend from thirty years before. Together, in the woods, they build a tree house that was instrumental in Paul’s boyhood flights from reality. Upon his return to the present, Paul seeks out his childhood friend, only to find that this old friend has been unable to overcome the past and live with the hand that life dealt him. Paul’s childhood friend, Hoffy has become a victim of his surrounds and tragic upbringing. Paul also gets to visit Hoffy’s elderly mother, a time traveler of sorts, herself, whose journeys are made on the wings of dementia.

 

    Present-day Paul also visits Gina Bonapart, his childhood sweetheart and the most desirable girl in his high school. Paul finds that brains, looks and money do not insure happiness.

 

    In time, the time traveler must decide which of his two daughters he will pass the secret to. The decision is made for him when his youngest comes to visit him in the hospital. Paul Stone lands in the hospital due to a car wreck which occurs due to an involuntary time trip. When he smells his little girl’s "peaches in summertime," he realizes his youngest daughter will be the one to inherit this great gift. Knowing he is able to speak to his daughter as a next generation time traveler, he gives her a message of love and hope.

 

    Before long, time travel begins to compromise Paul’s existence and his present life suffers; he neglects work, his health deteriorates (a time traveler ages at twice the normal rate when in transition) and he even misses his own mother’s funeral. On a direct request from one of his mother’s letters, he is told he must stop time traveling for 30 days. Paul is not sure if he can do it?

 

   On his final journey of the book, the traveler gets stuck for a prolonged period in his boyhood past. He wonders if he will ever get back to his life in the present. He comes to appreciate the very things, he once disdained. He learns that living in the present is far better than living in the past, far superior to day dreaming about the future or lamenting what might have been. Most of his time journeys last only a matter of hours. On this last trip in the book, the time traveler is stuck in the past for a complete day and evening. On this journey, due to the loophole of the time/space continuum, Paul is able to speak a few words to all those who matter to him. He speaks to his childhood friends, neighbors, sisters, brother, mother and father. Paul Stone is able to do that one thing many of us have wished we could do, go back in time and say a few last words to those who are no longer with us.

 

    In this first few journeys, Paul Stone attempts to change the past by going back in his own life and uncovering the reason for his mother’s unhappiness. What he learns, in his travels are secrets to his own life; seeing pivotal events as they really happened, not as he remembered them. He experiences his father’s detachment, relives his brother’s sexual abuse and truly sees himself during his heroin using years; all from an adult, sober point of view.

 

    The author has taken the popular concept of time traveling and added his own unique vision of cross-addiction, genealogical molding and familial balance. The reader will long remember the characters that weave in and out of time during the time-traveler’s journey.

 

    A Zen-type approach to destiny, a Christian sensitivity towards forgiveness and a futuristic bent regarding time and space, combine to bring the reader headlong into an absorbing and harrowing tale of time-twists and family developments that will both haunt and fascinate.

 

    Upon his return, the time traveler has learned to live in the present. He ends with these final words…

.

…    And to any of you who may happen upon this writing, I advise you to do the same. Live your life in the present. Do not look to the past or the future for answers. Appreciate the moment. Take your dog for a walk. Love each other and love yourself. Play with your kids and cherish your friends, parents and siblings. Ask God to give you this day. Not any other day, but this day and appreciate your daily subsistence. Do not violate others and forgive those who have trespassed against you. Love one another and love yourself. These are not original thoughts but universal ones. For truth transcends time and love crosses all barriers; be they physical, emotional or temporal. I must go now. I must go and live my life, as I hope you will live yours.