Tracks That Lead to Joy

Sometimes the lives we lead don't fit our natures. Ross Rowen, heir to a pharmaceutical fortune, deserts the velvet life of wealth and haute culture to live in poverty among blue-collar laborers. Shannon Flavin deserts a troubled family to take her place in the great Manhattan. They meet in the diner where Shannon waitresses and instantly fall in love. When Ross accosts a Vietnam War protestor, they travel to Shannon s home in Blue Water, New Jersey. Life in the backwater resort clashes with Ross s quixotic temperament. They return to Manhattan, but life in a Midtown mansion doesn t match Shannon s guileless disposition. She doesn t belong in the gilded society Ross saunters through. She doesn t belong among Ross s intellectual friends. She returns alone to Blue Water. The broken tracks on the beach at Blue Water lead to reconciliation and the novel s fundamental insight it is not possible to cure a life. Misfits in the greater life of the world, they fit into one another s life, perfectly. Shannon rescued Ross from a debauched life in New York. Ross follows her to Blue Water and learns what love requires. In the novel s tumultuous close, Ross risks death to save the love of his life.