Tom Young wants to make a difference in the world. He joins the Peace Corps and is sent to an impoverished farm community in remote southern Chile where a reforestation project is the campesinos’ only hope for a better future. Tom finds himself in a breathtakingly beautiful land from a bygone era. Horses and oxen provide transportation, light is from kerosene lamps, and water is fetched with buckets from springs. He is drawn to the closeness of Chilean family life, and desperately wants to fit in as he struggles with the language and customs. Fighting depression and loneliness, he slowly adapts, but is shocked when brutal acts of violence rock the community. Tom’s bonds are truly forged with this forgotten world when he embarks on the seemingly impossible task of building a new road into the campo. What he doesn’t anticipate is the relationship that develops with a beautiful young woman, a relationship that will provide the key to Tom’s heartwarming – and heartbreaking – acceptance into the community.

One For the Road

Literature & Fiction

Mather, David J

Genre Fiction

Peace Corps Writers

Tom Young, still lamenting the death of his Chilean fiancé thirty years earlier, returns to southern Chile. When thousands of black-necked swans disappear, it is an environmental disaster. What’s going on! He meets a handsome young couple, Amanda and Carlos, who suspect a new paper mill is poisoning the waters of the swans’ refuge, and set out to prove it. The amoral mill owner, financially strapped, can’t let them succeed, and will do anything to stop them, including murder. When middle-aged Lilia, tortured by the memory of being raped when she was twelve years old, meets Tom, he feels a stirring he hasn’t felt since before his fiancée’s tragic death. She too is attracted to him, but they are soon caught up in the mill owner’s violent attempts to silence Amanda and Carlos, with disastrous results. The tragic, surprising, and, finally, hopeful twists and turns of this fast-paced, environmental drama make it difficult to put down.

When The Whistling Stopped

Literary

Cardboard-wrapped, forty-pound bales of marijuana called square grouper are flooding Florida’s Gulf Coast. Undercover State Trooper Rusty McMillan is sent into the backwater fishing village of Crescent Beach to bust a key operator and stem the area’s rampant smuggling. Expecting to deal with trailer trash, Rusty instead discovers a hardworking community from an earlier era when life was simple and straightforward. He becomes immersed in the everyday life of shrimping, crabbing, and fishing, while at night he drinks beer, arm wrestles, and plays poker with the locals who become his friends. Rusty gets the evidence he needs, but can he make the arrest? Either way he’s a traitor: to his job or to the community. But, before he can decide, the town is slammed by unexpected hurricane force winds and a lethal twelve-foot tidal surge. Rusty joins the men, women, and children in the life-and-death struggle with a ferocious storm that plays no favorites.

Crescent Beach (The Crescent Beach Series)

Five years ago as an undercover State Trooper, Rusty McMillan fell in love with the peaceful backwater fishing village of Crescent Beach. When he retires, he moves there permanently. But, he soon learns that things have changed. The sports fishermen now outnumber the commercial fishermen two to one and they’re at each other’s throats. The sexy bar owner’s ex has gotten out of prison and has come looking for her. Scallop shucking determines a Festival Queen while a modern day Tortoise & Hare race captivates the town. A body is discovered and a Colombian drug cartel seeks vengeance. Add Rusty’s attraction to his best friend’s wife into the mix, and Rusty’s peaceful little town is anything but. A sequel to the novel Crescent Beach, many of the same characters return and some whacky new ones appear. If you enjoyed Crescent Beach, you’ll love Raw Dawgin’.

Raw Dawgin' (The Crescent Beach Series)

Retired state trooper Rusty McMillan is doubly guilt-ridden. He didn’t prevent his best friend’s murder and only months later he is sleeping with Crystal, his best friend’s widow. Rusty is haunted. The only way his and Crystal’s relationship can survive is if he can put the guilt behind him: he has to find the killer and justice, in whatever form, must be served. He learns that the murderer is Joe Slater, a hit man and drug smuggler for a Colombian cartel operating out of Miami. Rusty sets off to bring him down, but has little luck playing by the rules until fate intervenes. He learns that Slater will be running several hundred bricks of cocaine in his fancy yacht to a casino in Biloxi, Mississippi. Rusty and the FBI plan a sting, but it goes deadly awry: Rusty’s vengeance does not come easy.Meanwhile the fourteen-year-old darling of Crescent Beach is off to high school and meets Billy, the first love of her life. Billy introduces her to drugs, sex, and crime. Rebecca soon becomes hooked on opiates and her life spirals tragically downward. She steals to pay for drugs; but gets caught. She tries desperately to quit cold turkey, but withdrawal is too much and she hits bottom when she finds a new, depraved way to pay for her habit. Rebecca’s life is a mess. The only question is if she or anyone can do anything about it. Rusty’s and Rebecca’s stories are interwoven among the day-to-day life of the Crescent Beach community. Much of the strength of the novel is in its familiar but varied cast of characters, several of whom have their own concurrent stories. The Biloxi Connection is the third novel of the Crescent Beach Series.

The Biloxi Connection (The Crescent Beach Series)

Peace Corps Worldwide

Gator Bait (The Crescent Beach Series)

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Thrillers & Suspense

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