The Christmas Roses Must Not Die

Book excerpt: "...life is mocked by death, and we are the fools." --Justin Chance Is this the despairing conviction of an eighteen-year-old boy haunted by personal demons pursuing him as he runs from a tragic past? Or were these words uttered in ignorance of the real demons seen by supersleuth Benjamin Wade as the Baby-Boomer parents of Michael Weston and Michael's betrothed Erin Jennings. When the friendship of Michael and Justin metamorphoses into romantic love before the fireplace on a snowy Christmas Eve, their lives suddenly change forever. Michael, a successful software entrepreneur at the young age of twenty, must now choose between Love and Love and can only watch helplessly as his world begins to collapse around him. A story of two boys who are coming of age in a Baby Boomer-dominated society and who find themselves suddenly faced with all the great questions humanity has perpended for millennia--questions about love and life and fate and who we are as participants in the social order, indeed as members of the human species--it is an indictment of the Boomer generation and the world that generation has created. As Michael and Justin struggle to understand the great personal and societal forces bearing down heavily upon them and to do what they each believe in their young minds is the right thing under impossible circumstances, their superior intelligence can find little guidance in the accepted wisdom of their country. A cast of colorful characters animates a story of deep emotion engaging the reader, a story whose suspense rivets as it builds toward the dramatic climax.