Robert Hays has been a newspaper reporter, public relations writer, magazine editor, and university professor and administrator. A native of Illinois, he taught in Texas and Missouri and retired in 2008 from a long journalism teaching career at the University of Illinois. He has spent a great deal of time in South Carolina, the home state of his wife, Mary, and is a member of the South Carolina Writers Workshop. His publications include academic journal and popular periodical articles and seven previous books, one released in paperback under a new title. This is his third novel. Two earlier novels, Circles in the Water and The Life and Death of Lizzie Morris, also were published by Vanilla Heart. Robert and Mary live in Champaign, Illinois. They have two sons and a grandson and share (long story!) a cat named Eddie with the family next door.
When young Jimmie Broder witnesses the death of a friend's
father in a brutal domestic quarrel, he's left with a sense of helplessness
and an unwitting habit of taking the easy way out that follow him into
adulthood. Unable to face their painful circumstances, he runs away and
seeks refuge as an Army paratrooper at the very time Colletta, the woman he
loves, needs him most. This is the backdrop of Circles in the Water, which picks
up Broder's story after a training accident leaves him seriously injured,
brings Colletta back into his life, and forces him to face not only a jumpless
future but also his troubled past. His ordered military
existence and the exquisite thrill of the jump no longer insulate him from
memories of life in small-town South
Carolina, surrounded by poverty, racism, alcohol and
drug addiction and, finally, rape and its terrible consequences.
Just when Broder least needs the
added complication, he gets caught up in a mysterious and dangerous
conflict between two superiors that places him in a vulnerable
position that feels all too familiar. No longer the "good
soldier" who follows orders without question, ready and eager
for service in Iraq,
he comes to renounce war and knows that he can never again follow orders
blindly. And worst of all, Colletta disappears as suddenly as she
had come back into his world. He wants to reconcile with Colletta and
learn to love her child, to settle into a peaceful life. But are his
earlier failures too much to overcome?
Whatever else this story may be, it is primarily one
of young love—of childhood sweethearts in a setting both charming and ugly, and
the young man and woman they become. It interweaves their contemporary
lives with the chronicle of their early years as part of an inseparable
foursome of troubled youth and the tragedies that befall their comrades, DJ and
Ray-Gene.
The Life and Death of Lizzie Morris by Robert Hays
Life is good for Bradley Morris, an aging but vital World War II veteran, except for the nightmares and horrible memories of long-past days in combat. With his beloved wife Lizzie at his side, he travels back to the battlefield in Sicily where he was mortally wounded and his best friend died, and finds that facing his demons head-on helps bring peace of mind. But now he suddenly faces a far more painful situation: the potential loss of Lizzie, who appears to be in good health one minute and suffers a massive heart attack the next.
As Lizzie lies in a coma and death seems near, others in the family accept what has to come. But Bradley refuses to give up. He relives in memory his and Lizzie’s years together—their time as high school sweethearts, the ordeal of his going off to war, the trials of raising children, his alcoholism, and their learning and growing together through the racial strife surrounding the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in their home town of Memphis.
Bradley gradually allows himself to acknowledge the inevitable and devotes himself to keeping promises made to Lizzie—particularly reconciliation with their son after a decades-old quarrel over the Vietnam war. And he must also find a way to overcome the guilt he feels for surviving his own war when his best friend did not. In the end, it is renewal of the faith he lost in battle that sees Bradley through.
When Birdie Wilson and his two boys find a baby floating in a basket on the Ohio River, they can’t begin to imagine the impact their discovery is to have on their little town of Cambria.
Accepting Birdie’s dictum that the child welfare people will name her “Baby Jane Doe” and lose her in their impersonal system, the townspeople, led by Mayor Johnny White, set out to keep the baby a secret from authorities and take care of her until they find out who she is.
Surprising things take place. Cambrians who’ve never agreed on anything come together. Good things happen to those who become involved. Father Jacob and Pastor Mike, always competitive, work together. Granny Vogler, the town sorehead, and Ida Quattlebaum, the reclusive heir to the Quattlebaum Steamboat Company fortune, find common interests. And most important, Molly Hearst, who cares for and comes to love the baby like her own, finds love with Lynn Swafford, a deputy sheriff searching for the baby after one of Birdie’s boys inadvertently reveals her existence.
In the end, Lynn’s son Morgan finds an old law that allows Judge Harold Winkler to resolve the baby’s status in favor of the Cambrians and Molly’s daughter, Justine, uncovers evidence that the baby was among those lost when a packet boat sank on the Ohio—a hundred years ago…