This book is the second in a series of three books. It is the continuing story of Jack St.Clair and Diane Dante. Book One, begins at Boston University, where Jack St. Clair, then a freshman, meets the Love of his life Diane Dante. Just two American kids, who like somany others of the late 20th century, lose their way.

 

    In Volume 1, Love Hurts, we meet Jack and Diane. Jack is from a wealthy Boston family and as these things sometimes happen, he undergoes a series of unforeseen setbacks. As a result, he is forced to leave Diane, the only woman he ever truly loved. However, people, like true Love, can survive just about anything. Regimes may fall, governments may topple, natural disasters will keep happening, shit always happens and people will continually suffer. However, Love, true everlasting Love can endure and sometimes when all seems lost, Love comes knocking at your door.

 

   Jack (the Saint) St. Clair was that kid who had tons of potential. He was a good-looking kid, a smart kid, a talented guitar player and a promising Golden Gloves boxer. He was good at everything he tried. He was from money and an upper station. He went to a fine university. He was bred for success but doomed for failure. He had it all. Yes, he had it all but then like so many others who came up in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, he lost it all.  Jack and Diane met in the fall of 1969 at a Tom Rush concert at the Boston University Student Union, when they were both freshmen. A very drunk and a very stoned Jack St. Clair literarily fell into Diane Dante’s lap where he quipped, “Is this seat taken?” Thus began a Love affair that would last for the rest of both their lives.

 

   The couple moved in and lived together for the next three years; falling deeper and deeper in Love. They made plans for the future. Jack was going to play music. Diane would make partner at some big law firm, before she was thirty and they would live happily ever after.  Man plans and God laughs and all that.

 

    It was in his junior year of college when Jack made the biggest mistake of his young life. He took part in a mangled and a botched political bank robbery. The year was 1973.  The Vietnam War was raging and many students had taken to the streets in protest. Jack had been one of those students. He marched on Washington, sung at anti-war rallies and spoke and played his guitar at peace demonstrations. The problems arouse when three misguided members of a radical fringe group, duped Jack into driving a getaway car while they were inside a bank attempting an armed robbery. The naive St. Clair believed the BU- 3, as they later became known, when they said they were only doing a radio interview. He also believed that the unseen bomb and automatic rifles tucked away in a duffel bag were just recording equipment. It was one of those mistakes that can determine a man’s path for the rest of his life. Unfortunately, the two would-be bank robbers who marched into the 1st Commonwealth Savings and Loan of New England’s Allston Branch never came out. Prison Pete Simons and Angel (Wings) Wang were blasted into a million little pieces all over the walls of that particular saving and loan institution. Angle Wings Wang accidentally set off the detonator of his homemade bomb. The two desperadoes were killed.  Of the two victims, one would never walk again; the other would die before thirty of cirrhosis of his liver. As a result, Jack and Dory Goldman made the FBI’s most wanted list and for the next eight years, Jack became a most-wanted man.

 

    After the bungled bank job, Jack and Dory (Dimples) Goldman made their way to a safe house in Warren Vermont. Along the way, Dimples cold-bloodedly drowned Jack’s beloved dog, Lazzie, giving the reader a sense of the woman behind the political rhetoric.

 

    The working commune / farm was overseen by a power-mad, charismatic (is there any other kind) leader by the name of Dean Cassidy, born Orrin Sicklehouse. While in Vermont, much to Dory’s chagrin, Jack took up with an unstable woman named Cate Stony, born Catherine Walker. Cate was arrested during the subsequent FBI raid and later had a son whom in deference to her pseudonym, Cate Stony nee Walker named her Love child Stone William Walker. Stone Will was yet another child Jack St. Clair would not know until many years later. Cate killed herself shortly after getting out of a two-year hitch in prison. Stone’s dysfunctional grandparents, from Albany New York raised Stone Will Walker as their own child, which of course could not have been good.

 

    Following the FBI’s raid on the compound, the two fugitives made their way to Nantucket Island. While there, Jack crewed, worked as a handyman, fisherman and volunteer ambulance driver. After two years on the island, Dory faked her own death by fire, only to show up years later attempting a hostile takeover of Jack’s thriving clothing company. Orrin Sicklehouse and Dory Goldman joined up, married and spent most of their waking hours plotting the ruin of the life of the man they were convinced had ruined theirs.

 

    Diane Dante, the Love of Jack’s life, on the other hand, had left Boston soon after the bank job with Jack’s unborn child in her tummy. Mother and daughter, a precocious baby girl named Emma, moved to Paris where the child thrived under the watchful eye of frustrated suitor and ersatz husband Dr. Marco Falerne. Diane worked as Dr. Falerne’s assistant, midwife and office manager. Her accrued medical training would serve her well later in her life.

 

    Diane Dante, now living as Beth du Barry did indeed moved to Paris and raised her child. She thought it best to escape the glare and limelight of reporters who has hounded her relentlessly after her live-in lover had escaped. In Jack, Diane had found the man she wanted to marry but it was not meant to be; not for another thirty-two years. Emma grew up believing her father was killed during the fall of Saigon in 1975. When Emma was ready to attend college, mother and daughter moved to Boston. Emma went on to medical school at Boston University; her mother’s (and still unknown father’s) alma mater.

 

    While Jack was on the run and the whole time Diane was in Paris, unbeknownst to the other, the couple wrote long letters to one another but had been unable to receive each others letters. Therefore, they mailed their correspondence to a mutual friend who saved these letters, later entering them into his computer. Diane had asked Darryl Lorenzo, Jack’s best friend and Golden Gloves cornerman, not to tell Jack where she was living or that he had a daughter. And for all those years, neither knew of the other’s whereabouts or existence or that each very significant other, in spite of everything, still pined and hoped for what once was but now would seemingly never be

 

 

   And that is where Love Scars, Book Two of the Love Rescue Me Trilogy begins

 

    Act V:

Life Goes On

    A Spiritual Quest

     & Raising a Teenager

 

     Jack and Rosie go to Maui where Jack meets a Shaman. Aided by a magic potion, Mama Joy takes Jack on a spiritual journey. Through the holy woman, Jack meets a centuries old Siberian woman called Tee-Neng. This Spirit guide channels Jack’s deceased mother who gives him advice and hope. Rosie has a dream of her own where she learns the meaning of her Native American name; Two Hawks. Jack, his Spirit guide and Rosie share in one of Jack’s most heartfelt songs. Later, still on Maui while on one of their Saving the Day missions, Jack and Rosie witness two authentic Christmas miracles. A group of lost sailors are miraculously saved and Jack and Rosie are firsthand witnesses to this Christmas Miracle. Jack and Rosie return from the island energized and revitalized.

 

   Several years pass and Jack has gone the way of so many other lost idealists. He has begun taking anti depressants and sedatives. Reluctantly he realizes that these are not the answers to life’s questions. It is six years after his previous trip to Maui. He goes back with his daughter Rose. While on the island Rosie is put into grave danger and is trapped in the cave where Jack had contacted his deceased mother. Jack’s mother comes to him once again, this time in a dream. She takes him to a self-revealing multi-tiered tower where she reveals Jack’s true purpose in life and she tells him where he can find his Rosie.

 

   Jack and Rose return once again from Maui and Rosie comes to live wither father. Jack is now the sole custodial parent. He puts Rose into a private Catholic school, devoting his new single, sober life to her. Rose excels at school and it is a happy and productive time for the two St. Clair’s.

 

   In Sept 2001, Jack and Rosie go to NYC. Jack is prepared to take an offer for the controlling interest in Bluesmen Enterprises. The meeting is set for 8:30 am, at One World Trade Center, in the North Tower. The weekend before the meeting, Jack and Rosie explore the city. Jack has an epiphany at the base of the Statue of Liberty. Emma Lazarus’s words at the base of the statue prompt Jack to change his life’s goals, yet again. He makes a solemn vow to himself but this is not meant to be, not at that time. Later the two vacationers see a Broadway show and spend time at the John Lennon memorial in Strawberry Fields in Central Park. The pair then fly to Boston, where Jack has a bitter and painful reunion with two of his sisters.

 

  Act VI:

Relapse, Loss & Skid Row

 

 

     On the morning of the 9/11 attacks, Jack and Rosie are taking an early morning flight out of Logan Airport in Boston. Jack must get to New York for his big business deal. While in the airport, Jack runs into several of his TJ Maxx buyers who are on their way to LA to open a new store. He also sees his old friend Berry Berenson, the actress, AIDS activist and widow of Anthony Perkins. Berry is also on Flight 11 with the TJ Maxx buyers. Jack promises them all they will get together in LA, not knowing that Flight 11 is scheduled to slam into the same building where Jack’s morning meeting is set to take place.

 

     Jack is in the WTC, going public with his small but profitable clothing company when the first jet hits it. The final offer for his company comes as almost as big a shock as Flight 11, when it slams into the side of the building.

 

    Jack had been offered a great deal of money for controlling interest in his Bluesmen Enterprises. But at what price and from whom? Jack walks down the 39 flights safety but will be forever changed. After witnessing firsthand the horror and destruction as well as seeing many of the two hundred plus jumpers who leapt to their deaths, as soon as he gets back to his hotel room, Jack pours his first drink in some time. Bluesmen Inc is tied up in the courts for years, once the not meant to be controlling partners die when their building is hit during 9/11.

Unable to handle the horrors he witnessed, Jack relapses and begins a three year downward spiral. Rosie is about to graduate high school and will soon to be off to Stanford University. Jack suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He starts drinking and using heroin again ultimately ending up on Skid Row and in two very different Los Angeles Missions. The reader gets an intimate glimpse into life inside these two big city missions.

 

    Jack ends up re-addicted to drugs and loses everything, including his two front teeth and self respect. His family and friends turn their backs on him and he ends up alone in downtown on Los Angeles’s Skid Row.

 

 Act VII:

Jesus Saves / Moses Invests

             Sober, Redemption

and Love at last.

 

    Jack lands at the Los Angeles Rescue Mission, a Christ-based recovery program. Jack, previously sober in a 12 Step program has a hard time accepting the rigors of organized, right-wing Fundamentalist Christianity and he rebels. During the six months Jack is at the Mission, he studies his Bible but eventually he sees the hypocrisy of those who use the “God’s Word” to suit their own agendas. In desperation and frustration, he uses again and is asked to leave.

 

    After a month on the street Jack is accepted at the Midnight Rescue Mission. He realizes for the first time in his life, that being white on the black run streets of downtown Los Angeles is not an advantage. He learns to swallow his pride and now out of options, he permits abuse from several black men who despise him, solely because he is white. He discovers he has become ‘small’ when all his life he had been ‘big.’

Jack’s daughter Emma du Barry, along with her mother has moved to Boston. Young Emma attends her mother’s (and father’s) alma mater, enrolling in Boston University. Emma becomes a doctor, volunteering at several free clinics in the Boston area. It is here where she meets Juliet Jensen-Ames, the very girl from Dogwood that Jack had propelled into a medical school of her own. The two do not realize their Jack St. Clair connection until later in the book and well, you’ll see.

 

    While at the Midnight Rescue Mission, Jack writes an epic poem written in the Rap style of the streets called, “Ode to the Nickel.” He sees his addiction like an old lover gone badly and writes Dear Disease, a love letter to his addiction.

 

    Jack reclaims his life, and health. He works his 12 Step program and for the first time since 9/11 he has hope for the future. His lawyer James Westcott tells him that Bluesmen’s legal issues will soon be resolved and once again Jack will be a rich man. Jack makes a strange request of Jim, which puts into motion Jack’s plans for the future.

 

    It is now 30 years later when Jack sees his college sweetheart, the love of his life, Diane Dante.

 

    Diane is on a ten-city charity trip giving away shoes and socks to the homeless. Jack sees Diane while she is volunteering at the Los Angeles Rescue Mission. Diane is working for her church group giving away shoes and socks to the poor and taking a lesson from Jesus, they wash the feet of the poor. Jack is so ashamed of what he has become, that he is unable to present himself to her. Six days go by. She is due to leave after seven. Finally, painfully, he walks up and sits in her chair. Without looking up Diane recognizes the unique feet, silently hoping it is her one true love. But what would Jack St. Clair be doing in a Skid Row mission? Finally Jack says their once favorite line (“Is this seat taken?”) and they are finally reunited. It is February 29th, 2004. Jack and Diane have not seen one another for almost thirty-two years. Seeing that is Leap Day, Diane asks Jack to marry her and Jack immediately accepts.

 

    Emma has now traveled to Los Angeles to be with her mother. Together Jack and Diane go to meet their daughter and tell her that her real father (Jack) has been alive all these years. Emma is overjoyed; having always secretly believing her real father was alive. Emma and Rosie, sisters now, meet. Rosie promises to join them in their new endeavor once she graduates from Stanford. Together Jack, Diane and Emma coceive of a program dedicated to helping others. The call the new program The We Are Family Foundation. Jack, Diane and Emma use their combined resources and put everything they own towards helping others/ Above the door to their new headquarters are the immortal words from the Book of Acts;

 

    “In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak,

remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’

 

    Darryl Lorenzo (Delo), now an editor in San Francisco has saved their mutual letters. He puts the letters together, having waited these years for a happy ending. He calls it Love Rescue Me. Love on a Mission. It’s a big hit and they live happily ever after.

 

     Or do they?

 

   Book Three All You Need Is Love picks up where Book Two / Love Scars leaves off. 

 

     Join us as we follow Jack and Diane and a whole bunch of familiar plus new characters as they weave in and out of Jack and Diane St. Clair's turbulent life.