CARSON McCLINTOCK IS NOT DEAD YET
It’s 2027. Healthcare in America is broken, the social safety net is barely there, and the youngest Baby Boomers are pushing seventy. Using a windfall from his late media mogul father, aging erstwhile circuit court judge Carson McClintock III buys a dilapidated trailer park along an island beach west of Portland and starts a commune for his indigent geriatric peers. At All That Matters, the arts are everything, ADA-approved walking trails are plentiful, and care is taken to bring meals, music, books, and bedside encouragement to the most enfeebled residents, easing their transitions to the next world—all completely free of charge. McClintock hears Artemus, a great horned owl, hoot in the dead of winter, plaintively calling to a mate. McClintock is left to confide matters of the heart to his wise Hindi landlord, Rohan Talwar. The friends, together with a new and surprising love interest for McClintock, steer ATM into the future even as fate takes them on surprising and circuitous turns toward the ends of their earthly journeys.
Award-winning author, teacher, and paper artist Beth Kephart says of Nancy’s work and her novel-in-progress:
“I trust Nancy Townsley to tell a powerful human story—relatable, foundational, and timely. I loved her first novel so much that I shared these words across social media:
Martin Donovan is a big-hearted, small-town newspaper man whose daughter, his Sunshine Girl, is buoyed by his love, irrefutably drawn (how could she not be?) to the chase of home-town stories, and bewildered (and later magnified) by family secrets. As energetic as it is energizing, this multi-generational novel features an endearing cast of foibled characters, a percolating plot, and enduring lessons in forgiveness. No question finally goes unanswered within this family of journalists. What might have divided the characters—so many secrets, a clutch of bad choices—ultimately unites them, a novelistic twist we might wish for us all.
Now Nancy has shared with me news of and pages from her forthcoming novel, Carson McClintock Is Not Dead Yet. Could there be anything more pressing than a tale of baby boomers crashing, tsunami style, upon an already wobbly social infrastructure? Could the very idea of McClintock’s All That Matters respite for the indigent elderly come from a more hopeful place? And isn’t it lovely that it is the birds that return McClintock to the island where he takes his stand?
I wholly endorse Nancy’s new work and deeply hope that it will find its way into the hands of many readers through the right press.”
A vibrant, socially engaged work of dystopian fiction, Carson McClintock Is Not Dead Yet stares into the abyss of current affairs in America and takes a bald-faced swing at what’s taking place, where it all might go, and what is still possible.
