Beth (Paperback) | Released: 03 Oct 2013

Beth is a drama built around the fraud and failure of many savings and loans in the mid-1980's. David is a successful south Florida real estate broker. Beth is a legal aid who comes into his life and they become lovers. They plan to be married but the Viet Nam conflict and David's draft notice interrupts their plans. During a conflict, David is shot several times and reported as dead. Beth tries to recover her life and marries another. David returns to south Florida after many years in a Vietnamese prison and for a flash, their love is rekindled. However, neither can live with adultery and guilt, so David leaves Florida. He gives up all that was once his life and floats around the country in an attempt to escape the inner pain. His agony finds outlet in writing and singing blues and folk music. His new musician lifestyle becomes the force which gets him through the days but musicians are not notoriously wealthy and prosperous. His vagabond life carries him to all parts of the country, but without public recognition, he has to maintain some sort of day job. In order to support his music career, he learns the craft of a detective, working for numerous agencies, large and small. He becomes an accomplished detective well before his music talents are recognized, but a few good songs and he is soon a celebrity in both fields. Beth's husband has also become extremely successful as a vice president of a major savings and loan. His recognition brings him a promotion and a new job in northern Virginia. Some years after Beth and her husband have left south Florida, David as earned the recognition that allows him to return to south Florida and assume a more sedate life. David opens his own detective agency, re-opens a real estate office, which was his original career, but continues to write and sing his music. It is David's skill and recognition as a detective which brings Beth back into his life after twelve years and the story begins when David returns home to find Beth waiting on his doorstep, her eyes in tears and her life in a shambles. Her husband of sixteen years is accused of embezzling large sums of money from his savings and loan employer and he has disappeared under a cloud of suspicion. All the family's financial assets have been frozen and Beth is unable to support her two teenage daughters. She believes that her husband has been killed and her own life may be in danger. David is the only one she knows with the skill or any reason to help her prove her husband's innocence. David allows Beth to stay at his Florida home and sends for the two daughters while he investigates the husband's disappearance. Comfortable that the family is safe, David goes to Richmond where the events occurred. The balance of the story describes David's investigation of the disappearance and the intrigue and conspiracy of the massive fraud in the lending industry in the mid-1980's. Unlicensed in Virginia, he enlists the aid of a Richmond detective agency, a cooperative reporter and eventually, a team of beautiful and politically powerful lady attorneys. For the first time in eighteen years, his heart is divided between this dynamic lady attorney and the years of unrequited love and faithful abstinence. His investigation reveals that the fraud Beth's husband has been accused of is a ruse, planned to direct attention away from the actual culprits and to conceal the extent of the actual theft. The team discovers that the fraud extends the full length of the east coast to such extent that millions of dollars and many lives become collateral damage or casual business expense as a minor cost of major embezzlement. The team is successful in resolving the fraud and bringing the actual thieves under the law, but the story contains twists and an ending that I prefer to leave undisclosed. It is a story of challenge, excitement and romance. The story is fiction, but is tied closely with facts.