MARY’S MOUNTAIN is BREATHING FIRE ON KINDLE!! The story of a teacher turned famous author–Paul Dunaway– and his struggle to re-shape his affluent but joyless life, while opposing forces in the out-of-control, politically correct America he helped to create, literally take him down.
Mary’s Mountain is a story of Tolerance taken to the extreme.
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Reading Sample:
After sex, as she always did, she took a black pen from the bedside table and made a few notes on a new pad of starlight-colored paper–until her eyes lit unexpectedly, as if a lightning bolt had struck inside her head.”Fallacies need to be exposed, don’t they? You and I can expose the God fallacy, Paul! I’ll come up with a proposal and you’ll make it credible. Together, we’ll re-write history to show that America is based on hedonism, not the laws of a trumped-up God. Personal happiness, which is avoidance of pain, should be the only standard for right or wrong.”
But over a decade ago, in his first thesis required for graduation–the one he’d actually turned in, he cautioned about the error of hedonism, asserting that pleasure and pain could not constitute the standard for right or wrong, because pleasure is different for each individual. “Where’s your proof that happiness is the guideline?” he asked her.
She grinned. “The U.S. Constitution, of course. Doesn’t it guarantee each of us the right to pursue our own happiness? And happiness is obtained only by pursuing pleasure; not pain–like your guilty conscience impels you to do.”
He didn’t agree. His intellect told him she was wrong, but a burgeoning sense of arrogance urged him to give it a try.
“Well?” Irene coiled beside him on the bed, ready to strike if he gave the wrong answer. “What do you think?”
“People will resist,” he said, but he wasn’t positive of that anymore.
“Our persuasiveness will break down any resistance. We’ll remold American minds to see that any stirring in the so-called soul is not from God, but simply one’s craving for pleasure. Will you do it?”
He thought briefly about his home, where heaven seemed close enough to touch from anywhere on the mountain, and a person’s dignity was treated as a gift from God. Because of it, no neighbor locked a door, no person went hungry if anyone knew about it, and no enemy remained unforgiveable for long. How could he denigrate his roots again; this time, without the excuse of immaturity?
But Irene was salivating beside him. “Oh, it would make us famous, Paul, even wealthy! The public is primed to swallow it. Who wouldn’t want to be rid of religiously imposed guilt, and its link to accountability?”
He had to admit he’d relish not having to account for the things he’d done. He looked at Irene beside him, knowing she was aware that his desire for her was far greater than his desire for his wife. And she’d been around him long enough to know that becoming famous and wealthy would be hard for him to ignore. She handed him the black pen and her starlight colored paper as if all had been decided. “What should we label our idea?”
Our idea? But it was only an idea, and it probably wouldn’t work. To keep Irene happy, he lifted the pen, scribbling on her pad as he spoke. “We need an encompassing word, a bit of doublespeak to legitimize the theory. Something no one could object to.” Then he stopped scribbling and wrote the word that came to him: tolerance.
“Tolerance is what we should call it.”
“Oh, that’s perfect!” Irene exclaimed, and fell upon him.
Translating a World on the Edge 