The Good-Bye Man (round three coming up)

[rose]

Bless you, Wilderness. That was a wonderful insight into a major oversight. Of course that needs to be clear from the start!

Didn't I read that you have a full out being read now? I hope that ends well for you.

Thank you, again, for the help.
rose

[rose]

With much gratitude to those who have helped me get this far, and in appreciation of any comments or thoughts anyone might want to add at this point.

Dear Agent Numero Uno

When Linda Brown begins to research the life of her fabled physicist father, an old sweetheart of hers returns from the beyond to help stage manage the project. JD Garrett, first reported dead in 1987, had been a teenager when he was recruited for intelligence work by the world's most famous spymaster. He emerges from deep cover to attest to Thomas Townsend Brown's long and successful career in the darkest fields of scientific espionage.

THE GOODBYE MAN is a daughter's 65000 word memoir about growing up in the close confines of a family at the constant beck and call of a never openly discussed clandestine profession. It is a love story for her parents and for the seen and unseen companions who have been a presence throughout her life.

Although the framework of her narrative is set between 2002 and 2008, Linda's earliest memories are of the Brown's pioneering adventures in Hawaii during the late 1940's. These years are followed by a peripatetic childhood and an adolescence punctuated with moments in the presence of such famous men as William Stephenson (Churchill's WWII spymaster), Ilya Tolstoy (Leo's grandson), Curtis LeMay (USAF General and architect of the Strategic Air Command), and nuclear physicist, Edward Teller. But once her high school sweetheart disappears into the netherworlds of the CIA, she vows that she will never again fall for a man whose career might come under her father's sphere of influence.

35 years later, she and her husband have been happily married for ages, when a biographer approaches her about writing her father's story[1]. She agrees to help with his research but her husband soon resents her devotion to the project. The two of them are in the midst of a marital crisis when JD shows up in her horse corral.

Linda finds that the mature man in the motorcycle leathers disturbs her poise as much as the young man with the overriding ambition to become James Bond ever did. He arranges for them to spend time alone together, but his focus this time around seems to be on the book in process, not on her. Unfortunately his work takes him away again before Linda can ascertain his feeling in that area. All she gets is that in his profession it is sometimes necessary to keep several agendas in play, all at the same time.

When, a very brief time later, she (once again) receives word of his demise, she is not convinced that it is final. She is certain that she will see him again. Although she is not sure what it will mean when she does.

In the meantime, she has a book to finish.

[1] Now Published as Defying Gravity: The Parallel Universe of Thomas Townsend Brown. Townsend Brown's work is also mentioned in these available books: The Philadelphia Experiment, The Day After Roswell, Secrets of Anti-Gravity Propulsion and Hide and Seek, a History of Naval Espionage During The Cold War. A community of researchers devoted to investigating the life and work of Townsend Brown can be found online at The Quonset Hut, (http://ttownsendbrown.com/forum/index.php) a discussion forum hosted by Linda Brown.