The Stuttering Jock's Opera is a thinly disguised hero's journey-complete with three challenges. The lead character is physically reckless, but socially shy because of his halting speech. He trains in the early morning, works temporary clerical jobs during the day, and grapples with an English libretto to a neglected German opera in the evening. A victory celebration in a San Francisco Chinatown restaurant results in connections that take him to Windsor-Detroit, Toronto, the Russian Far East, and Beijing, and end with a Mandarin performance of his version of Der Freischütz in Xi'an, central China. Of greater importance, along the way he earns what he had long dreamed of-but assumed he would never have-the love of a beautiful, accomplished woman. But not before he performs a couple of rescues, races the marathon of his life, and works a different kind of temp job, as a porter for a scientific expedition searching for a Chuchunaa, an indigenous Russian version of Yeti, Bigfoot, and Sasquatch.
