Gwyneth’s Secret Grandpa >
Marianne’s Secret Cousins >
Secret Losses >
Ginger and the Gen’rul – Ten Short Stories About Relating >
Franks Bend – A Small Town Fights Back >
GWYNETH’S SECRET GRANDPA – 2001
(John R. Dixon writing as Annie Morris Williams)
Twelve-year-old Gwyneth is lucky to have a brother like Davie, and he takes her with him to search for their secret grandpa. Before they find Grandpa, though, Davie joins the Marines to go fight in World War II. So Gwyneth continues the search alone. Along the way, she has to cope with a sharp-tongued grandma, wartime difficulties on the home front, and Davie’s wounds (both inside and out) from the war. But she finds Grandpa and a whole secret part of her family. It’s an emotional adventure that requires Gwyneth to be brave, resourceful, caring, and sometimes stubborn.
Copies of Gwyneth’s Secret Grandpa are available. Contact the author >
MARIANNE’S SECRET COUSINS – 2005
(John R. Dixon writing as Annie Morris Williams)
Marianne is fifteen as she tells the story of how she developed a passion for ballet, and overcame her papa’s angry objections to her taking lessons. (She locked herself in the family bathroom!) Then she learns of her papa’s secret family in Sicily. So when her brother, Sal, returns from the Korean War, they go to Sicily to search for their cousins. They find them in the ancient walled-in little town of Guidomandri on a hill overlooking the East coast of Sicily. It’s an adventure back in time, including a catacombs – and then forward again when Marianne returns home and fulfills her dream of being a ballerina.
SECRET LOSSES – 2000
Secret Losses is the mostly true story of a family secret, its revelation, and its consequences. It tells of an exiled man’s life of loss to disease, disaster, and divorce, and how a woman’s scarred face from an “accident” infected the unsuspecting family. And it tells how a rich family heritage hidden by the secret was discovered by the grandson in his struggle to understand and repair the effects of the secret on him and the surviving family.
The loss which is unknown is no loss at all. Publilius Syrus, 42 BC.
Perhaps. But when found out, secret losses cut a double wound: one by the loss, another by the deception. John R. Dixon, 2000 AD.
GINGER AND THE GEN’RUL – TEN SHORT STORIES ABOUT RELATING – 2020
Ten short stories. In Ginger and the Gen’rul, a desperate young woman meets a needy old man on a hiking trail. They work out an arrangement until . . . In Blue Sapphire, two lovebirds celebrate their sixty-fifth anniversary, but, alas, Abigail doesn’t get the gift she so badly wanted from Harrison. In Mary McKay, a college freshman manages to meet a Catholic high school senior on a Pittsburgh streetcar. They begin a streetcar-riding romance that continues until . . . In Mama Bear, former Colonel Sanborne Holloway, M.D., stumbles back into the life of Lieutenant Veronica Bear, once his battlefield surgical assistant, now a street person. In Lanterman’s Falls, a young married man, frustrated by his cautious upbringing, takes a life-threatening risk to show his new wife what a daring-do man he can be. In The Kid, an under-aged, inept Army recruit is taken under the wing of a college grad draftee; together, they survive the Captain’s grueling marathon. In Patriots, an American Korean vet is ejected from a Japanese WWII Memorial in Tokyo by a Japanese patriot. The two meet again at the Arizona War Memorial in Pearl Harbor. In Keep the Faith, a young man searching for the father he never met finds evidence of his past in a New Hampshire barber shop. In No Quittin’ in Defendin’, a clever, dedicated public defender loses a client to gunfire. He is devastated, but not permitted to give up. In Egg-Rock, a hiker and his dog encounter an obstacle in a trail that is remarkably like one he dreamed about. After avoiding a rock slide at the location, he wonders Was it coincidence or precognition?
FRANKS BEND – A SMALL TOWN FIGHTS BACK – 2020
Franks Bend is a typical small town in America, quiet and innocent, about to lose both its quiet and its innocence. Like all small towns, Franks Bend is surrounded by America’s troubles: lethal drugs, hateful crime, persistent racism, illegal immigration, violent gangs, unpredictable climate, even terrorism. Encircled by such problems, how can the small town resist being invaded by them. It can’t. But with some help, it can fight back to save its culture and way of life. The fight is led by Wally Rhys, retired insurance investigator. He is assisted by Jimmy Evans, the town’s police chief, and by the chief’s mother, Cate, who becomes Wally’s cohort. They have help from Nancy Behr, an NSA agent whose cover is being a Prepper, and from a group of elderly newbies who call themselves the New Settlers. The troubles from outside begin: there is murder, vandalism, an ambush, drugs, and even terrorism. Wally and his friends deal with these problems but then there are more: a house is shot up, stores are firebombed, MS13 comes to town, and a gang of gangs makes a raid. Believing they have helped the town survive the worst, Wally, Cate, and the New Settlers celebrate by holding a traditional cultural event: a square dance — attended by an amazing diversity of Franks Bend residents. But there was still more trouble to come . . .
John R. Dixon 