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Beyond Eden

by Clark McKercher Simms

262 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #02-0790; ISBN 1-55395-076-3; US$23.00, C$26.95, EUR19.00, £13.50

In BEYOND EDEN idealist, pacifist parents are challenged and transformed when their eighteen-year-old daughter, the central character of the novel, is threatened by a stalker. Mounting danger and harrowing conflict evoke the heroine's resourcefulness and courage.

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About the Book      About the Author      Sample Excerpts      Catalogue Info

About the Book In high school, Linda Millar had made her mark as student, athlete, and popular leader. She was levelheaded and, despite her achievement, modest. The young man she had fallen in love with found her very attractive. Unfortunately, so did the man who became her stalker. Linda's parents were idealistic pacifists - until their daughter was threatened, and their friendly and peaceful community, Eden Park, no longer felt either comfortable or safe. The darkening shadow cast over Linda enveloped and transformed the whole family. People and relations would never be the same again. BEYOND EDEN - A novel of romance, family crisis, psychological suspense, mounting danger, and harrowing conflict that challenges the heroine's resourcefulness and courage

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About the Author       As an English teacher, Mac Simms has introduced students to great literature and guided them to write effectively and creatively themselves. Articles and speeches have dominated his own writing as a concerned citizen, political candidate, and school administrator. A shift in his personal and creative focus now permits him to turn to a longer literary form. The novel, he finds, permits him to become immersed in the lives of characters who accompany him in the telling of their story, acting and interacting in accordance with their natures, while he records, as much as he creates, events. He takes pleasure in introducing these characters to his readers, hoping they will enjoy the encounter and grow fond of most, but not all of the people met in BEYOND EDEN.       Deep respect for Quakers and close relation over time to several Quaker Meetings, coupled with enlistment in the army in one war and active participation in the peace movement in another, inform a central conflict in the novel, one that remains only partially and uncomfortably resolved for the author.       Mac lives with his wife, Chase Crosley, in rural Columbia County, New York, where they are surrounded by cattle and corn fields Their four children are scattered from Maine to Arizona, leaving them with each other and a large dog of dubious ancestry.

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Sample Excerpts

Chapter 12

       When they arrived at the station, the policewoman behind
the desk greeted them with a friendly smile. "Won't you have a
seat? Chief Glasser is expecting you. I'll tell him you're here."
       As they turned back toward the row of chairs against the
wall, Linda glanced at those already sitting there. At the end was
a boy in his middle teens, dressed in disheveled denim jeans and
jacket and dirty sneakers, leaning slightly to one side with
shoulders hunched forward and feet tucked under his chair.
Whatever expression of confidence or contempt usually went
with the turned-up jacket collar had been replaced by slack jaw
and eyes that saw, if anything, only the scuffed floor tiles in front
of him. Next to him in a blue windbreaker with a logo over the
pocket was a burly man, perhaps fifty, with short sandy hair
graying at the temples. He held a newspaper on his lap, but
looked straight in front of him. She could see the jaw muscles
clench and loosen. At the other end was a middle age woman in
a print dress, nonchalantly chewing gum and turning the pages
of a magazine. She looked like someone at a laundromat waiting
for the spin cycle to end. Linda and her father took seats at the
woman's end of the row. Linda watched a policeman filling out
forms, then dropping some on another desk and taking the rest
to a bank of gray file cabinets. Except for the badge and the
holstered automatic prominent on his hip, he might have been a
worker in any other office...
       When they walked in, Chief Glasser stepped quickly
around his desk and extended his hand. "Hello, Tim, I'm glad
you could come down." He turned to shake Linda's hand and
held it a moment while he studied her face. "And this must be
Linda. I know you only from the sports pages, and these stories
I 've been hearing from your father lately." As he motioned to the
chairs beside his desk, he added, "I'm glad to meet you, but I'm
sorry it's about business - especially this business."
       Linda and her father sat down, and Chief Glasser leaned
back in his chair, tapping his fingers together and frowning
slightly as he looked at Linda once more. "I really hadn't
expected you to be here, Linda. You have a right to be, but I
don't like adding to what you're going through if that isn't
necessary. It's not as though we really knew what we're dealing
with here."
       "Tom, I think Linda would rather hear whatever you have
to tell us directly without wondering what I'm filtering."
       Linda smiled at her father and nodded at Chief Glasser to
confirm what had been said.
       Linda and her father both sat up straight to see what was
on the desk in front of Chief Glasser. There was only one manila
folder, and, reading upside down, Linda saw that the name was
not hers. It was unfamiliar.
       Chief Glasser pulled the folder toward him and tilted it
down to rest on his thighs. As he opened it, Linda could read the
name clearly: Samuel Tailor Oliver. Something about the name
seemed vaguely familiar now, but she couldn' t place what it was.
Then her father pointed at the folder. "Stol!" he said. "That's
where the name came from - the nickname."
       Chief Glasser looked at her father and nodded.
"Apparently. He's gone by that nickname before, though he
doesn't always use it." Chief Glasser closed the folder, slid it up
onto his desk, and hitched his chair forward. "I don't want to
alarm you two. It's possible there isn't cause for alarm. We
really can't be sure. But I believe in being ready for more than is
likely to happen." He lifted the folder just off the desk. "There is
reason here to be very cautious and very careful. That's my first
comment."
       Linda glanced at her father, whose nod of
acknowledgement and direct return of Chief Glasser's look
invited him to continue. "I'd like to tell you what I know, but I
need your agreement to keep whatever information we uncover
close to the vest. I opened a suspect file, and I can't have
informants or an ongoing investigation compromised."
       Her father hesitated. "Whatever I know I share with my
wife, Sarah, Tom. And Linda s brother, Josh, knows everything
we do. He's only sixteen, but he's a pretty solid kid. If I make it
clear that whatever information I pass on has to stay right there,
is my telling the family a problem?"
       Chief Glasser leaned back and tapped his fingers
together again. Then he smiled briefly at her father. "It won't
surprise you that I'd rather have one person know something
than four, if I don't want it to get out. But you can't keep
everything to yourself, of course." He lowered his hands to his
lap and looked at each of them in turn. "I'll leave it to you to
make sure everyone understands that our success and Linda's
safety may depend on not leaking information. I can't think of
any exceptions."
       "Agreed. Thanks."
       "I understand," Linda said. Her alarm was growing, but
she resolved not to show it.
       "OK, here's what we have. The name on the automobile
registration is apparently his, since it fits the nickname he's been
going by. He has a clean record in this county, except for a
couple of unpaid parking tickets and failure to notify the Motor
Vehicle Department of change of address. The address on his
registration is the apartment he moved out of nearly four months
ago. Technically that's a violation, and we could have his license
pulled, if that were useful." He leaned forward and reached for
the folder. "We do have his current address, by the way."
       Linda s father spoke quietly and without emotion. "Do we
know where he works, or what sort of work he does?"
       "No. Not yet. But we should be able to find out. We've
just gotten the first useful leads." Chief Glasser paused and
looked at each of them. "Now for the big stuff. He has a pretty
clean record in this county, but he's been here less than a year.
Up in Hancock County the story's a little different. The request
for paperwork has gone through, and we should get the full file
before long. What I've got is just what came in over the phone,
but I was talking to Bob Sweeney. He's been sheriff up there for
a long time, and he's always been straight with me. It seems
Oliver's parents still live up there - in East Franklin - and he
lived with them off and on until about three years ago, except
when he was married. He married at twenty, divorced at twenty-three.
There seems to have been a domestic abuse suit filed by
his former wife, but it was dropped about the same time the
divorce went through, so there may have been a deal there.
According to the divorce agreement he was supposed to pay
child support for his daughter, who's now ten, almost eleven.
There've been some appearances in family court. Paying child
support doesn't seem to be one of his high priorities"...
       "After he grew up and was duly reformed, he was
arrested twice for involvement in fights in which people were
seriously hurt, though no one was killed. Police up there
describe it as turf wars. Both times charges were dropped,
because the witnesses failed to show up for the hearing."
       Linda and her father nodded, but made no comment.
Chief Glasser went on. "Then there's the rest of his relation to
women. Two stalking incidents - one confirmed, anyway. Two
and four years ago. The earlier one was a young woman who
worked at a diner near a warehouse where he worked. He
apparently found her very attractive, but she didn't respond to
his advances. He sought her out at the diner, then for a week
walked home with her nights when she got off work. At that point
she got someone to drive her home." Chief Glasser thumbed
through his notes. "He also telephoned her at work and at home.
The young woman and her parents called the police, and this
Oliver fellow got a visit and a set of warnings that he didn't like.
His response was to get angry at the girl, to send her a bunch of
nasty letters, and then to just ignore her. She was really scared,
the chief up there says, and for a while he had all of his patrol
cars in that area alerted to the situation."
       "What happened?"
       "Nothing. He never called or wrote again. There's a note
in the file from a report she phoned in. It says once he saw her
on the street, glared at her, and just turned on his heel and
walked away."
       Chief Glasser lifted the file an inch or two off the desk,
then let it fall. "The other case isn't clear. Not in any respect.
There was a woman - this time a little older than Oliver - who got
letters, then flowers, even candy on Valentine s Day. Didn't
know who it was all from. Mostly signed 'a secret admirer' or
something like that. She thought it was all a joke. Then the notes
started to tell her where to meet him. She didn't, of course, and
that's when the police came into it. This guy started scratching
the finish of her car at night. There was paint smeared on her
front door, then dog feces left in the mailbox. No finger prints on
the box, but a neighbor got a pretty good look at the guy. The
description fits your man and Linda's sketch, except for age and
hair. The guy up there was described as younger, and his hair
was longer."
       "Didn't anyone try to find him, since they had a
description?" Linda s father asked.
       "Oh, yeah. Later on, when they had a good reason to,
they nabbed him. But the lady who saw the guy at the mailbox
couldn't pick him out of a lineup."
       "Even after a good look at him? Too bad."
       "Well, it had been some time. And, of course, he might
not have been the one at all. There wasn't much to go on. The
lineup was about ten months after she saw him." Chief Glasser
paused and looked toward his office door, then back at Linda and
her father. "That's when someone found the woman's body, or
what was left of it, back in the woods."

Chapter 40

       This time being followed made Linda feel warm and
secure. She glanced in her rearview mirror often on the drive
home, not because she feared that Mitch would lose his way or
not keep up with her, but because he enjoyed seeing him
driving the Bridges' jeep behind her. As she drove, she
reviewed and absorbed their afternoon.
       From the moment nearly a week before that she had
realized that she was truly safe, the image of Mitch had
accompanied her, roaming in and out of her thoughts, but always
available to be called back. Once she was safely back home, the
first thing she had done was to call him. After she had taken a
shower, hugged each of her parents and Josh one last time, and
gone to her room, she had picked up his picture, hugged it to
her, and then taken it over to her bedside table. She had fallen
asleep curled up on her side and whispering Mitch's name to her
pillow. It was not the first time he had imagined them naked in
bed together, caressing each other and exploring each other's
bodies, and then making love; but the thought carried a clearer
expectation and intention now.
       There were still times when she would suddenly awake,
her heart pounding, from dream images of Stol, the cabin, and
the bed to which she had been tied. Each time she had looked at
the barely visible drape of curtain at her window, the dim
outline of familiar desk and bureau. Then, taking low, deep
breaths, she had pushed those images aside, consciously
picturing Mitch as he had leaned in the car window to kiss her
goodbye, then stood back, smiling as he waved her off. Then she
had thought of their being together again and making love.
       For years, sex had been alternately fascinating and funny,
attractive and repellant. Now it was a longing that had merged
with something deeper and even more powerful. Once an
unwelcome and confusing intruder that had somehow found its
way into her being, sexual desire was now a welcome part of her
and of the relation that would be woven ever more tightly into the
fabric of her future.
       This weekend would not be the time for them to make
love, but she was content to know that the occasion would come.
Their time together for these two days would be spent with or
close to family; yet awareness and acceptance of limits had made
the hugs and kisses of the afternoon a comfortable and special
delight, enjoyment to be savored and explored. She had known
the kind of excitement that came from a tangle of desire and
restraint, with uneasiness burgeoning into fear as it surfaced in
the midst of a mounting wave of urgency that rose to drown her.
That kind of excitement had first frightened her, and then enticed
her, and at times she had taunted it, as children follow the
retreating ocean waves across bubbling wet sand and then run
back as the next surge lifts. Thinking of those times, she was
glad to have them behind her, ready now to go not back to them,
but beyond them...

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Catalogue Information

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