INTRODUCTION
Strangers When We Part, a romantic fiction, is a man's search-for-
love story, analogous to Melissa Bank’s The Girl’s Guide to
Hunting and Fishing, plus technical touches like Tom Clancey and
surprise endings similar to O. Henry.
A subset was a finalist in the James Jones First Novel Contest.
From boyhood to experienced adult, our nameless, universal hero
engages girls and women in his travels. But, like the meddling
characters in 50 Ways to Hex Your Lover by Linda Wisdom, fate
frustrates our hero, reminiscent of Paul Simon’s melancholy song
50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.
SYNOPSIS
Our oldest profession arose from something even older -- our
search for true love.
In Strangers When We Part, our nameless hero is like many men, is
perhaps the universal man. He is not loveless, yet from early
boyhood to experienced adult, he seeks a soul mate, a woman to
love completely and forever. When he finds her, will he and she
love happily ever after?
In each of thirty independent stories, reveries, poems, and
limericks, we meet a different woman and get a different answer
that partially reveals the man. Although each chapter stands alone,
it is interrelated to others by characters and chronology.
Our hero is eager and open to love in many forms and finds the
search for love both exciting and challenging. He is off to an
auspicious start when he is only four years old with the happy
discoveries of the sexy girl across the street and the lovable girl next
door. They are followed by the new girl in seventh grade who
triggers Sister Mary Annuncio’s jealousy, the party girl and her
pedagogical mother across the tracks, and the co-star in the high
school play. He wonders if he is why one girl becomes a call girl
and discovers his manhood with the bully’s moll. He hits pay dirt
with the gold-miner’s daughter and even with the girl who leaves
him at the altar.
Hitchhiking around the world, he finds a fabulous Fräulein behind
the Iron Curtain and a Greek tragedy below the Acropolis. In
Silicon Valley he pursues R&D with women who often are on a
similar search at conferences, on the farm and freeway, in the
airport, and on the net. These are women he wants to love, perhaps
could love, maybe does love. Yet fate repeatedly denies our hero
lasting love, reminiscent of Paul Simon’s melancholy song 50 Ways
to Leave Your Lover.
Always optimistic, ever glad for the women he has known, he is
finally and fully rewarded with true and certain love.
Strangers When We Part, a romantic fiction, is a man's search-for-
love story, analogous to Melissa Bank’s The Girl’s Guide to
Hunting and Fishing, plus technical touches like Tom Clancey and
surprise endings similar to O. Henry.
A subset was a finalist in the James Jones First Novel Contest.
From boyhood to experienced adult, our nameless, universal hero
engages girls and women in his travels. But, like the meddling
characters in 50 Ways to Hex Your Lover by Linda Wisdom, fate
frustrates our hero, reminiscent of Paul Simon’s melancholy song
50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.
SYNOPSIS
Our oldest profession arose from something even older -- our
search for true love.
In Strangers When We Part, our nameless hero is like many men, is
perhaps the universal man. He is not loveless, yet from early
boyhood to experienced adult, he seeks a soul mate, a woman to
love completely and forever. When he finds her, will he and she
love happily ever after?
In each of thirty independent stories, reveries, poems, and
limericks, we meet a different woman and get a different answer
that partially reveals the man. Although each chapter stands alone,
it is interrelated to others by characters and chronology.
Our hero is eager and open to love in many forms and finds the
search for love both exciting and challenging. He is off to an
auspicious start when he is only four years old with the happy
discoveries of the sexy girl across the street and the lovable girl next
door. They are followed by the new girl in seventh grade who
triggers Sister Mary Annuncio’s jealousy, the party girl and her
pedagogical mother across the tracks, and the co-star in the high
school play. He wonders if he is why one girl becomes a call girl
and discovers his manhood with the bully’s moll. He hits pay dirt
with the gold-miner’s daughter and even with the girl who leaves
him at the altar.
Hitchhiking around the world, he finds a fabulous Fräulein behind
the Iron Curtain and a Greek tragedy below the Acropolis. In
Silicon Valley he pursues R&D with women who often are on a
similar search at conferences, on the farm and freeway, in the
airport, and on the net. These are women he wants to love, perhaps
could love, maybe does love. Yet fate repeatedly denies our hero
lasting love, reminiscent of Paul Simon’s melancholy song 50 Ways
to Leave Your Lover.
Always optimistic, ever glad for the women he has known, he is
finally and fully rewarded with true and certain love.
Peter A Berardo, PhD
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| STRANGERS WHEN WE PART |