J E Delehanty

'Tis More Than Luck J E Delehanty

Young Jack Laney wakes on an ordinary morning in early summer to the familiar sounds and smells that populate his small world. Taking his time to savor it all and dream for a moment of what the day might bring, he is unaware that he will soon be uprooted from the people and places and things that have given him life and security and happiness. When the reality finally sinks in the resulting struggle heightens each and every experience of his last months in familiar surroundings and amplifies the importance of every moment. He finds his desire to hang on is as strong as his need to let go. Where there was once just a girl from the neighboring farm there is now a mystery, where before there were three old ladies he was forced to visit in the dimness of a room they have not left for many years there are now three great aunts who reveal lives and loves and dreams he had never imagined to be a part of their lives. The young boy's story and where he finds himself reveals a greater story of many loves and many losses, of youth and first love, of adult wisdom, of nurturing and of family. For our hero it is a story fraught with the thrill and the pain of coming of age with all of its many rights of passage. Yet, it is also the story of those who came before him and how they shaped his life.