The French Quarter, New Orleans. A child is tortured and murdered. A killer must be caught. Three men must work together in a race against time. Another child is going to die. The French Quarter is awake; and the French Quarter is afraid.

In my poem 'Life's Vagaries' I describe observations of a tattooed female, shuffling along in the market place with her boyfriend and the sign on a nearby church inviting people to 'light candles'. My emotional response is to juxtapose the meaning of love with religion. This book of poems expresses a wide range of experiences as I create responses to major themes in life such as birth, love and death. Covering over seventy years, the poems show how an early religious upbringing can leave its almost 'Freudian' imprint. This can be seen in 'Lessons of War' one of my early memories. My interest in philosophy is demonstrated in the poem 'Stages of Life in a Dressing Gown' where I reach a mid-life crisis and almost press the self destruct button...but thankfully recover to continue the journey. Hope you will join the journey with me and see life from a different perspective.

Excerpt from Vagaries of Life, Vol. 1 of 2 We shall be now at leisure to introduce our intelligent reader to a breakfast party at Sir William Price's magnificent residence, on the morning identical with Mrs. Law rence's lecture, and subsequent to that dinner which called forth the charitable comments we have attempted to record. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The Bachmeyer family struggles to cope with the vagaries of life and death following tragedy, while operating a funeral home during the Great Depression...

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