Key Kokomo
by
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Entering the hallway, Chet had to adjust his eyes, as its tall timber walls went straight to the roof, the lighting was very dim. Track lighting, along each wall near the floor, provided a consistent light for the passageway. The floor was covered with thick burgundy carpeting. Two large pictures were along the left wall. Each was framed in special lighting. One, Chet recognized as Napoleon Bonaparte, the other was of a woman he did not know. She was a peasant woman breast feeding a baby. The painting of the woman drew him in. He saw the woman's plight, the disdain on her face for the one of many arduous tasks in her daily life, yet without it the child would die. The Van Gogh of the 'French Peasant Woman', in contrast to hanging next to the emperor of France, seemed to magnify her strife. He pulled himself from the images and left the room at the end of the hall, through leather padded swinging doors, leading into the Seahorse lounge.
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About the Book
Just off the Continental Slope, in the aqua-green waters near the Straits of Florida, is Key Kokomo. Purchased in the early nineteen thirties by a French orphan, the key became an opulent tourist resort known as the “Key Kokomo, Pier House Resort." Jethro Thurman Billman, or JT, built his resort on a pier jetting out into the crystal clear waters of the Atlantic. On this key, freshly divorced Chet Walker discovers his worst nightmare is not running from an alcoholic broken marriage. He looks beyond Key Kokomo’s lush tropical palm tree lined beaches, wispy pine forests, and murky mangrove swamps, and sees a true monster in the key’s owner JT. The two men become natural enemies, as Chet meeting new friends, wrestles with the ghosts of his past and his dreams for a future, and JT tries to consume yet one more tortured soul. JT’s desperate plan, to continue a dying bloodline, starts to unravel, during a freakish early January hurricane, called Annabelle. Key Kokomo a tropical resort paradise, where love and alcohol flow as free as milk and honey, dreams glow as fresh as the morning sun, and reality comes with a sobering price.
About the Author
The author was born in Kokomo Indiana in 1960, as one of five children, and he grew up in several states throughout the mid-west and south. Settling in rural Illinois, he played quarterback for his high school in a small town called Washington. After high school, he served in the US Navy 79-81 as a tour guide at the USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii. Divorced in 1981, today he enjoys being a father, and is a computer programmer living in Jacksonville, fla.