Patrick Vala-Haynes
The Henchman
"I spent 3 days last week working to untie a knot in an old piece of rope. When I gave up and pulled out my knife I still wasn’t sure what was right: the 3 days of effort or making the cut."
Dirt. A little girl leading a steer to slaughter. A piano. A man in thrall to the headstrong grace of old horses, the power of a woman’s desires, and boys growing into men.
Cully is a pit bull of a man. He’ll take out that stump, blow a hole in that party keg, put a dying animal out of its misery. Yet he’ll struggle to accept redemptive love. He’ll fuss over the details of his work—killing and butchering animals for a living—while his son imagines life as a concert pianist. Nobility and honor are more than simple conceits to this man. They’re demands that bring heartache and frustration. Cully’s son, Alex, is about to leave the womb of a rural childhood, and Cully is terrified. He fears that college and a life in music will erase every trace of him in the son he loves. What does a butcher say to Mozart? Though Cully has only a short time left in which to leave his imprint, he complicates even that by taking on an abused neighbor boy as his apprentice.
He’ll fight a rabid dog but can’t find the courage to kiss his son. It’s the modern West.
How precious to be a poet,
To find a mirror at every turn
And casually mask the thrill of notice.
A curator of passions, of polished grief,
Called to witness more than act
Raised on the ragged notes of protest against the war in Vietnam, Nicolas spouts his poetry in any seedy bar that will have him. When the undisputed King of the Beats, the larger-than-life Leo Norwood, rescues him from anonymity and ushers him onto the stage alongside the luminaries of Beat, Nicolas thinks success is finally within his grasp. But by 1977, shouted epiphanies have lost their power.
Born into the Beat world of her father, but rejecting his need for worship and applause, Eileen takes refuge in the intimacy and honest sweat of the dance studio. She flat-out rejects the drama of Leo’s startling request—that she become Nicolas’s muse. Loss and the naïve promises of the 60s lead Nicolas and Eileen into a tense and euphoric relationship. But lust, poetic splatter, and grand jetés can’t save this oddball pair from the effort and cost of attachment.
“There are innocents in the world,” my father said, “but you are not one. I wish you were, but am proud you are not. Every fight is a lesson, Morgan. You either learn and you adapt, or you do not fight again. If you fought only by the book, I would never have given you a sword.”
Haunted by the murder of her mother, a young woman seeks both revenge and to establish herself as a printer in 17th century England.
Morgan Smythe is not confined by the expectations of her times, but finds comfort at a blacksmith’s forge and, through her father’s tutelage, becomes a duelist of uncommon skill. She refuses to be ruled by skirts or the prospect of marriage. She sets out from the English Highlands for Oxford with a printing press, a wagon, and two horses. Only two days on the road, the desperate cries of a captive girl interrupt her adventure. In freeing her from two brutal henchmen, Morgan makes an enemy who will never forget being bested by her. With this rescue, she is drawn into the machinations of the man who killed her mother.
Cardinal Redstoke feeds on the spoils of civil war as he awaits the birth of his heir. His assassins threaten anyone who would challenge him. Now, even Morgan does his work, unwittingly caring for the girl who is pregnant with his child. Fueled by revenge and duty, Morgan builds a printshop, looks after her chosen family, and pursues a liaison with a mysterious actor. She navigates the plots of merciless men, but remains wedded to her promise of vengeance. She is not one to wrinkle her nose at blood.