Unending terror-in his twenties, that is what Chicagoan Peter Roche endured in every waking moment. Shattered by his father's harrowing death from cancer, and the incomprehensible destruction of his lifelong friendship with John Lemaster, Roche launched a quiet offensive against total fear, searching desperately for a last sign of hope along the darkening road to helplessness. With the aid of Dr. Alexander Conlon, Peter begins his quest for peace and safety, a quest that leaves him wondering if the good doctor will prove to be a force for sanity or yet another sign of the disintegration that he so fears. In a world where love and hate seem indistinguishable, and hope and fear are one, Peter's wife Allie is by his side. She challenges him with her realness, and emotions that are intangible and offers hope to find the minuscule safe point balanced precisely between longing for life and fear of death. For Peter, his father and John Lemaster embody the spiritual forces that, in tension, have forever made poetry work. Words...thoughts...images...all are real to him, stretching him between the Powers that insist on keeping the self together and those that demand its total dissolution. In this stunning, visionary novel, Peter confronts his past, seeking a way to distinguish the very poetry of life, from mere words and madness.
