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Lester Lies Down
James Ladd Thomas, author
Lester Gordon is an odd man, just like everybody else. He’s on the lower end of the spectrum, just like so many others. He falls in love and marries his next-door neighbor. They create a family with three children. All seemed right with world for this peculiar man. After cancer takes his wife, he finds himself adrift, wondering if he’ll ever regain his purpose in life without his wife and the mother of his children. He decides to sell his family’s car wash business and become a hospice nurse. He wants to comfort the dying just as his wife’s hospice nurse had comforted their family. While training for his new career he feels invigorated, a sense of newfound purpose coursing through his veins. Yet, on his first solo day of attending patients, he feels he’s made a terrible mistake in following his hopes of helping the dying. The emotional tsunami of confronting mortality on a daily basis has Lester listing in the water, drowning seeming eminent. Lester knows he’s providing the comfort, knowledge, and support his patients and their families need to navigate the dangerous waters of approaching death, but the deep waters of death overwhelm his ability to swim the ever-growing swells. Also, he learns one of his young sons is writing an erotic graphic novel and dipping his toes into becoming the neighborhood bookie. And out of nowhere an old friend shows up with a plea to hide out with Lester’s family to escape a couple of goons who are after her and the money she stole from an Oregon marijuana farm. Foolishly, Lester agrees. And strange white dogs keep showing up wherever Lester finds himself. And even more bizarre the dogs are always staring at Lester. Lester is an odd one who is full of anxiety and fear, troubled, and making stuff up as he goes. Just like everybody else.