The Winds of Change
by
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“Just let me rest a moment before I clean your pool. But first, darlin’ Susan,” Pat continued without a noticeable pause for breath, “you must accept an invitation to join some of us year-rounders tonight for a dinner party. Quite honestly, can you think of any reason for not appearing?”
“Not a one,” she chuckled, her head, like his, on the chair back, her attention on the cloudless sky. “What’s the occasion?”
“A welcome by some of your Anglo-Saxon neighbors. You are a world celebrity, you know.”
“I’m here to forget.”
“And you shall when you’re a neighbor, not a screen image.”
That makes sense, she decided, running her palms over her thighs, completely aware of how marvelously her shorts and halter displayed her.
“We’re also welcoming some other friends from the colonies,” Pat continued. “They’re spending the next seven months with us.”
“I thought I was to be the only American in Baladrar,” Susan pouted, her mood altering mercurially. “Now I’ll have to share the limelight.”
“Believe me, dear Susan,” he said softly, glancing aside at her, “you will never have to share the limelight with anyone.”
“Who are these colonists?” Susan asked, her dark brown eyes darting nervously from the mermaids to the camp stools and then back.
“Leslie and Jack Richards. Jack’s an old buddy we met years ago at Pamplona’s fiesta. An English prof at Dearborn University in Jackson, New York, don’t you know? He specializes in Hemingway and other Expatriates. Leslie has never been in Spain before, but we’re anticipating her presence because we like Jack so well and he has told us so much about her. She’s a public school teacher.”
“Then he’s been in Baladrar before.”
“Oh my yes. A couple of times after Pamplona. He, like you, fell in love with our coast.”
“Are they on sabbaticals?” Susan asked when Pat stopped and flushed water from his hair with a hard sweep of his hands, back and down.
Pat Kelly rolled his head to survey the slim figure so well known throughout the world.
“Oh no. They’re on leaves, gambling time and money for Jack to write about Baladrar. They’ve leased a small villa farther down the ridge.”
“All right,” she sighed. “When does this orgy begin?”
“Dinner-time. We’ll be at Kitty Lang’s.” Susan looked blank. “One of our English year-rounders,” Pat grinned. “Meet me on Tico Tico’s porch. You know the restaurant?” She nodded, picturing the popular night spot on the near slope of Cap Blanc. “Make it eight-ish and we’ll have a drink before heading for Kitty’s.”
“Eight it is,” Susan agreed, standing.
Pat launched himself out of the chair and headed toward the corridor separating the game room and the kitchen.
Susan watched Kelly disappear on his way to the pool, wondering as she had so many times before why he was in Spain instead of Ireland. Taking care of a handful of pools didn’t ring true. Nor had he been old enough to retire when he first arrived in Baladrar more than a decade earlier. And yet, here he was, nearing sixty.
Maybe Pat’s reasons were as deeply personal as her own.
Maybe!
Oh God . . .!
The lovely, cool courtyard blurred in a flood of tears as Susan’s disciplined facade vanished. She dashed across to her gushing mermaids and ducked her head under the tumbling water. There, with the water cascading noisily about her ears and the chill shocking her mind, she slowly regained the control she had completely lost for the first time in months.
She vowed it would be the last time.
Damned if it wouldn’t be!
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About the Book
When several newcomers join the Anglo-Saxon community on the beautiful Costa Blanca coast in southeastern Spain, all haunted by secrets in their pasts which are exposed only through ongoing interactions in a seemingly hedonistic lifestyle, drastic changes take place in their lives.
Susan Downing, the world-renowned and beloved actress, lives with a horror no one can imagine; Jack Richards is obsessed with being a successful author, an obsession even his wife, Les, does not truly understand; Harold Smythe, a block-buster author, repeatedly lures Jack into impossible competitions; Pat Kelly lives under a sentence of death.
Voluntary and involuntary disclosures of their various secrets move the characters closer to new lives until Pat unintentionally sends everyone hurtling toward disaster.
About the Author
Dale Soderberg had an artistic mother and a determined father. The result was a creative personality which led him from organizing and leading his own band while in high school and working as a commercial radio announcer to majoring in English at Gettysburg College and in Systematic Theology at Gettysburg Lutheran Seminary. While in college he was inspired to begin creative writing by professors who saw the glimmer of talent which was later used in writing sermons, short stories, and novels over a ten year stint in the Lutheran ministry in Clarion, PA, Horseheads, NY and Syracuse, NY. However, it all came to fruition when he became a high school English teacher who specialized in teaching Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James A. Michener, Nevil Shute and other modern authors. His first novel, published commercially in 1980, was an adventure/thriller built around the 1967 Israeli/Arab war.
Among other creative pursuits, he originated, organized, and directed tours to Europe, the Middle East, and Lutheran mission fields in Guyana, Liberia, Tanzania, and India, many lands that have provided settings for his writing. Early in his teaching career he decided that if one were to teach Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, it was imperative that he know something about the Feria of San Fermin in Pamplona, Spain. Although he has never run with the bulls, he has watched the running during seven fiestas and become an American aficionado of the bullfight.
When he and his wife, Marjorie, retired they were able to expand their activities to include working in Yellowstone National Park and serving as volunteer missionaries in Papua New Guinea where he taught at the University’s Teachers’ College in the Eastern Highlands Province. This latter experience also offered them the opportunity to travel extensively in New Zealand, Australia, and Southeast Asia.
The consequence of his many creative activities over the years has brought him inclusion in Marquis editions of Who’s Who in the East, American Education, the World, and America. He has also been honored in the Dictionary of International Biography published in Cambridge, England.
He and Marjorie live in Hamilton, NY where the two have close ties with Colgate University.