Until the End of the World

Canadian writer W.O. Mitchell once said "Humans need other humans to protect each other from the terror of being human". In the three novellas and nineteen stories between these covers, Michael Summerleigh takes a stab at exploration, looks at the terrors and outrages that inhabit our daily lives, the musty corners of our souls where we cry out for some sense of solidarity with our fellow travelers along the road of Life, in a world designed to keep us looking at the things that make us different from each other, rather than what binds us together in a common struggle.You'll meet Athena Rose, mesmerized by the mystery of the ocean horizon out beyond her home on the Bay of Fundy...Francesca...carrying an old secret since she was twelve...still wondering "Who am I for real?"..Garrett...sixty-eight years old...a self-imposed exile in a small resort town on the Gulf of Mexico where the college girls spend a night and then move on with their lives...Miranda and her baby brother...small salvations to be found in the innocence of an untainted soul...Christina...with her sixteen-year old daughter Rosie and best/friend lover Sophie...still trying to deal with the tragedy of her parents' deaths...Travis Harker...newly-retired...enchanted by a chance encounter in a local tavern, where he learns there's a price to be paid for everything.....and Siana...angry and on the run until she finds the true meaning of "family" on the edge of Monument Valley, and then must deal with her last bit of bad judgment in the outside world...There are heroes and villains, saints and sinners, all of them out there in the world lookin' for Love...safety...warmth...something...that will give them Peace and some kind of protection from the existential nightmares that haunt our lives...the Uncertainty that our "superior" intelligence allows us to recognise, but rarely provides us with the emotional and spiritual strength to withstand.Until the End of the World...it's still a long way to go...