Recovering Charles by Jason Wright

The novel, Recovering Charles, by Jason Wright is as much about breaking through personal barriers that are built when we're children as it is about the demoralizing aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. When Luke journeys to New Orleans to search for his father, he begins to piece together the puzzle of his father, Charles's, life and recognize his own personal barriers.

Charles had been missing from Luke's life for years, since his mother's suicide and Charles' subsequent plunge into alcoholism. But, as the colorful tapestry of Charles' life begins to form, Luke becomes acquainted with his father all over again, discovering a side of him that he never knew existed.

Wright effectively brings Luke's childhood to life by well executed flashbacks. Slowly, he unravels a story of intense happiness that descends into a hell of deep depression. The confusion and guilt that Charles felt after the suicide of his wife eventually leads him to alcoholism and how he escaped the unbearable memories by disappearing from Luke's life and creating a new life for himself.

Charles's life, after he disappeared from Luke's life, slowly begins to reveal itself through the memories of those people who have been close to Charles. It's a different outlook on his father's life than Luke has had for all these years. Luke slowly and painfully begins to understand how and why his childhood experiences and his father's disappearance have affected his own adult life, including his inability to commit to a relationship and his driven ambition to succeed as a photographer.

Sometimes it takes a tragedy to reveal those secret places in our own psyches that dictate how we view and live life. In Jason Wright's novel, Recovering Charles, we see how Luke Millward breaks through the barriers of his own life through the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent disappearance of his father Charles.

Charles life, after he left Luke and moved to New Orleans, is slowly revealed to Luke through the voices of friends and others who knew him best. Luke experiences flashbacks in his memory that allows him to view his own past from an adult's perspective rather than through the blurred vision of a child.

The saga of Luke and the search for his father, Charles, is a heartwarming story that merges the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina with the emotional and physical recovery of a man who thought he had it all until he became face to face with the hidden barricades that keep him from living a full life.

Recovering Charles will make you want to look at your own life, be grateful for what you have and look for the barriers buried in your past that keep you from being all that you can be.

Chapter 1

Monday, August 29, 2005

New Orleans was underwater.

The storm had come; the one the Gulf had always feared. Hurricane Katrina brushed Florida as a Category 1, killing eleven and leaving a million in the dark. Then it strengthened over the ocean and made landfall twice more, unleashing its fury on the Gulf Coast like a woman scorned. No mercy. Thousands fled before impact; thousands more stayed.

The footage was numbing.

Fats Domino was reported missing. So, too, were countless other musicians who had built the city but whose names we wouldn't know.

The French Quarter was mostly spared the flooding, but blocks away the water had baptized homes, businesses, nightclubs, and the homeless.

Fox News' Shepard Smith was standing on Canal Street. He tossed the segment to an unrecognizable reporter three miles away who was on a small fishing boat in the Lower Ninth Ward. The reporter gestured to a body twenty feet away- facedown, arms and legs spread out, like an upside-down snow angel. "It's hard to imagine what these people endured in their final moments. Impossible. Back to you, Shep."

Cameras captured water gushing over one levee while a helicopter dropped giant sandbags on a gaping hole in another.

A dozen residents stood on the roof of a fourplex apartment building. They'd made a cross with paper towels. A voice described what we so clearly saw for ourselves and asked viewers to imagine what it must feel like to sit so helpless on an island.

A mother nursed her baby under the privacy of a brown bath towel, and we wondered how long her milk would last without food or clean water.

Every channel had the same images. They came from slightly different views and were painted with their own set of dramatic adjectives. But the images were the same.

A man named Bernard was wading to the Superdome.

Bernard's wife, Donna, was missing. Seventy- one years old. She had gone to check on their daughter and her two grandbabies a few blocks away. He hadn't seen her since the levees broke. She needed her heart medication and would die without it.

"Anyone watching, anyone, please, anyone watching, please watch out for my Donna. And pray, please, that she's waiting for me on dry ground."

I didn't remember praying since 2002 when turbulence tossed my plane around before landing in Salt Lake City for the Winter Games. I closed my eyes and began to whisper.

My cell phone rang.

Fountain Realty

Jordan Knapp was the best friend I'd ever had. And she also happened to be the most beautiful.

She was confident but self- aware, and never condescending. Average height. Natural blonde hair that seemed to grow an inch every time I saw her. Real. Reliable. A problem solver. A Realtor. One of the most talented guitar players I'd ever known. A textbook self- starter. Punctual.

Always punctual.

"Hey, Luke."

"Hey, Jordan."

"Just got a contract on the place in midtown. The condo."

"Toldja you would." I flipped back to Fox from CNN.

"Yes, you did. Let's celebrate over Italian food tonight?"

"Sure."

"I'll be at your place at seven. Cab to Little Italy?"

"Seven."

"Something wrong?"

"Nah."

"Luuukey."

"Jooordy." Punctual and perceptive.

"What's up, Luke? What's going on?"

"We'll talk tonight," I said, watching the flickering images and listening to a reporter describe why some doors already had white X's and others didn't. Dead bodies.

"Good. See you at seven."

It was no secret that when Jordan closed her eyes, she saw a classic Disney prince and princess romance in our future. But that future for me hadn't arrived yet, and I wondered if it ever would. I loved her, certainly, but mostly I loved knowing that this was the most useful relationship I'd ever had. Where she saw a spring wedding and her mother's pearl- white wedding dress, I saw the next movie, ball game, dinner out, or daytrip to the country.

***

Jordan and I met at NYU. She'd been a law student; I was studying photojournalism.

We met at a birthday party for someone neither of us knew, and we clicked. She was a willing ear, an attractive one, sure, but we hadn't noticed each other romantically. At least I hadn't. In time she became bored with law school and earned her real-estate license.

We hadn't crossed paths for almost six months until a chance encounter at a club in Atlantic City where we discussed organized religion, relationships, Wendy's fries versus McDonald's fries, and the career ladder for detectives.

"Luke, listen to me again, it goes like this."

Eye- rolling.

She laughed. "Seriously, it goes like this. A Sleuth is the highest you can get. It goes Private Eye, then Junior Detective, then Detective- like if you go to school or the police academy for a diploma. Then if you're top- notch, I mean the best, and your peers recognize you that way, you become a Sleuth."

"Sleuth."

"That's what I said. Sleuth."

More eye- rolling.

"OK, OK," she continued. "Think about Magnum P.I. Tom Selleck played a private investigator, a good one mind you, and de- li- cious on the eyes, but he wasn't a detective because he didn't have the piece of paper or formal training."

Now I added laughter to the eye-rolling. "You've lost it, Jordan. You've jumped the shark this time."

"So in closing . . ." She flipped her hair and acted as if she hadn't heard me.

I liked it.

"The tasty Tom Selleck could never become an actual Sleuth, because he didn't have enough respect from his peers. He was too much a renegade. You need industry support to reach-"

"All right! I give, Matlock!"

"Now that guy could have been a Sleuth-"

"You win!"

"It took you long enough." She pulled her hair toward her right side, draping it over her shoulder, and let linger a style of smile that I'd never seen from her before. Seductive. Soft. "I hope it doesn't take you that long to ask me out."

Why not? I thought.

We left the club and I bought her a strawberry- topped Belgian waffle at an IHOP in Jersey.

"Make a bet?" she asked.

"OK. I'll bite."

"If I can eat this waffle in five minutes or less you have to take me to any restaurant I want for our first real date."

"How about three?" I countered.

"Four."

"Deal. And if you can't eat that ginormous waffle in four minutes or less?"

"I'll teach you to play the acoustic as well as I can."

"Chomp chomp!" I taunted.

Two weeks later we ate at the Rainbow Room in the RCA building. The meal was so expensive I could have paid for personal lessons from Eric Clapton.

That was the night I expected the spark my father had described to ignite my heart and change the nature of our friendship.

It didn't, though I held hope it someday would.

Jason F. Wright is a regular contributor on Fox News and is founder and managing director of the political destination, PoliticalDerby.com. Jason is the New York Times Bestselling Author of Christmas Jars and The Wednesday Letters. To Learn more about Jason and his most recent novel, Recovering Charles, visit: www.recoveringcharles.com