The Water Fall
by
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John Benumeane, a young solar engineer is transferred from Greenville South Carolina to Laguna Beach California in the summer of 2004. He and his wife Carrie purchase a small bungalow near the beach which stretches their financial safety net to the limit. During their first winter in Southern California El Nino returns with a vengeance dumping hundred-year rain on the region. During the height of the storm John tries returning home from the office to help Carrie deal with the consequences but when he does he has a run in with a two hundred year old Eucalyptus tree in his 1993 Saab convertible—trying to outrun a mudslide encroaching on the main artery between Irvine and Laguna Beach. A horrific car accident leaves him locked in a coma for two years. By the time he awakens and completes his rehab it’s already the summer of 2007. In the early months that follow with her husband deep in a coma Carrie learns how cruel and unrelenting life’s tragedies can be. She’s besieged by financial problems caused by John’s mounting medical bills, the threat of impending foreclosure on their home and delays extracting a settlement from the insurance carrier for damages incurred in the storm. But the biggest dilemma of all still awaits; Carrie must decide whether to take John off life support. Instead of running from her problems Carrie reinvents herself and meets them head on—but not before encountering a little luck along the way. Carrie’s transformation seems timed to a chance meeting with Paul Malone of Realty Now at Javier’s, a popular singles bar for the well-healed in Laguna Beach. But the true catalyst for change occurs much earlier when Carrie crosses paths with Jon Humbolt in the holding tank for loved ones at Orange County General as she awaits the outcome of John’s life saving surgery. Jon Humbolt the formerly disgraced CEO of investment banking firm HKG Securities has a knack for bringing out the worst in people and it’s no different this time. Carrie’s deep seated character flaws soon surface and she nurtures them back to life in self destructive ways. Before long Carrie is debt free and begins working for and sleeping with Paul Malone, among other things. When John resumes his life complications arise that he never saw coming; he encounters rain under the strangest of circumstances whenever his thoughts drift back to the day of the accident which slowly become introspective in nature. At first it all seems coincidental enough but not to Hal Sweeny a close personal friend of John’s who is also as close to the gambling gods as anyone can get. To play his hunch Hal puts John to the test in Las Vegas and again in Lake Mead. The latter event which is complicated by a multitude of external factors beyond his control eventually leads to John’s undoing at Lake Lanier in Georgia where the supernatural power that could only have been bestowed upon him on his deathbed has seemingly slipped away. During the time John’s internal conflict becomes a watershed event a drought is ravaging the lower forty-eight and the real estate market is stuck in overdrive due to rampant malfeasance by the likes of Paul Malone and Jon Humbolt who are two of its more egregious operators. The devil that sent Carrie on the road to perdition is back but now trying to monetize John’s power for personal gain. Having to compete against John’s preoccupation with rainmaking and fearing what it may be doing to his soul Carrie takes matters into her own hands. But so does Hal Sweeny when he suspects his ex-father in law Jon Humbolt of being indirectly involved in manipulating John for personal gain. And it’s not the first time these two adversaries clashed. It was five years earlier in “The Street Gamble” when Hal lost his job and his family for doing what was right while Jon lost what he never had; the honor and respect among other shadowy thieves on Wall Street. Although Hal is prepared to put his complicated relationship with his son and ex-wife on the line again, it’s Carrie who turns the tables on Jon Humbolt in the most unexpected ways.
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About the Book
John Benumeane, a budding solar engineer who’s just moved to Southern California, learns the hard way how cruel and unrelenting Mother Nature can be. It’s the winter of 2004; an El Niño is back with a vengeance. A horrific weather-related accident—a car collision with a two-hundred-year-old eucalyptus tree—lands John in the hospital, where he’ll spend the next two years in a coma, locked in a struggle between life and death. He awakens in a different world than the one he left. Although he suffers no physical impairment from the terrible accident, he finds he has a supernatural power that slowly takes control of his life. His own impetuous behavior is rivaled only by that of his wife—who in her own bid to survive the lonely years without him, has reinvented herself in ways that defy description. The challenge for the two young lovers is to find common ground that will lead them back to the life they once knew. But that ground is elusive and unstable, prompting John’s wife to turn to John’s old college friend for help—and when she does, the plot thickens. By then a drought has gripped the Lower Forty-Eight and the real estate market is hyperventilating from reckless malfeasance, with John’s wife in the center of it all. The people she works for want to own John and the very special gift he’s come to possess, but she has other ideas. Her story-within-a-story has twists and turns that will keep you guessing till the very end.
About the Author
If you ever thought of writing a novel than you owe it to yourself to read the newest release by John Goscinski called “The Water Fall.” He may be just like you, an accomplished author of numerous peer review publications in his chosen field of expertise when one day he decides to step out of his comfort zone and take a shot at creative writing. As the saying goes, everyone has one book in them, but for John this will be his second experiment following the release of “The Street Gamble,” in 2007— this time he has the chemistry just right. His newest effort tells a clever, suspenseful story centered on our most precious commodity, water and to what lengths depraved and devious minded individuals will go to control it. The story could take place at any time in our future but our author chose the 2004-2007 timeframe characterized by unprecedented drought conditions in the U.S. and what we now know was a self inflicted real estate bubble that eventually created a long and protracted financial crisis. Our author has a humorous way with words making the story all the more enjoyable especially when he describes some of the shenanigans in Washington and on Wall Street which brought the house down. But the story offers much more. Intertwined in “The Water Fall” is life’s most perplexing question— where do we go from here and while we’re here why should we even care to do the best for ourselves and our fellow man?