The Chair: Volume IV

Book excerpt: The Chair Volume IV, Punt, Pass, & Kick tells of a gala retirement ceremony for an employee held on a railroad trestle, a fishing expedition under the Idlewood Arch & Aqueduct, the bravery, battles, and bastions of the Texas Revolution, a quinceañera celebration near Matamoros, a standoff gun-boat battle on the Rio Grande between the Armada de Marina de México and Americans, an all-girl rock band from Topeka, a Thanksgiving dinner in 1971 Beverly Hills, a brunch with mimosas at the Pierre Hotel on 5th Avenue, a lunch at The Horse tavern in Baltimore, a docu-drama about a high-school football team in East Texas, intimate mother and daughter correspondence, an English suffragette who becomes an ocean-liner titan, four brothers from Italy creating a family olive-oil and wine-exporting company, the creator of synonym, antonym, and hyponym awareness for women entrepreneurs, a courageous cattle drive from South Texas to Wyoming, a seascape watercolor painter, and a teenage writer whose unpublished manuscript is found and read by Lana McCracken, the prime character in The Chair pentalogy, a story that can only be found in an old trunk between the real and imagined, a story for all times.