"Villages"

Novelist, screenwriter and playwright Robert Inman is a native of Elba, Alabama where he began his writing career in junior high school with his hometown weekly newspaper. He left a 31-year career in television journalism in 1996 to devote full time to creative writing.

Inman applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Villages, and reported the following:

I’m on page 69 of my new novel, Villages, and I’m frankly stunned at how straight it goes to the heart of the book.

Villages is the story of 21-year-old Jonas Boulware, who has reluctantly returned to his small hometown, wounded in body and spirit from combat in the Middle East. He is living temporarily with Doctor Frank Ainsley, a friend and mentor since his childhood. Jonas is by nature a caregiver, compelled to minister to the needs of people around him. That’s why he joined the Navy after high school and became a hospital corpsman (medic). He was the “Doc” for a Marine combat platoon, and saved lives during an attack while almost losing his own.

Doc Ainsley knows Jonas better than just about anyone, including Jonas’s own parents. On page 69, he and Jonas are talking about failure. In being a medic to those Marines, Jonas kept some alive, but lost others, and the losing cuts right to his soul as a caregiver. Doc knows the territory, because – like anyone who treats patients – he can’t save everybody.

Doc says:

“Jonas, you are one of the kindest, most compassionate people I have ever known. Unheard of in a person your age. You love people in the finest sense of the word. You want to make everything right for everybody, even when you know you can’t, and you try your damndest even when it wrenches your guts out. For God’s sake, don’t ever lose that. It’s the curse people like you and me to care, and to keep trying when we fail because we care. But you have to reconcile, Jonas, reconcile yourself to failure. Do all humanly possible, then let it go. If you can’t do that, you either quit or go mad.”

Jonas is trying mightily to keep the ghosts of his war experience at bay, but nightmares and flashbacks keep intruding. Still, he can’t stop trying to be a caregiver, because it goes to the very core of his being.

In caring and giving, and with the help of friends like Doc Ainsley and an unorthodox counselor, he begins to face his trauma, reconcile with failure, and see a glimmer of hope that he can come to grips with his new normal.

Visit Robert Inman's website.

--Marshal Zeringue