Miles Apart novella

Post date: Mar 16, 2021 3:22:59 PM

Miles Apart, a novella in the tradition of the works of Nicholas Sparks, tells the story of three generations of love and devotion. On the surface, Miles Buffett appears to be a successful Dallas lawyer. But, by his own estimation, he has been a failure as a human being. Having lost his mother to cancer years before while he was in law school, the death of his father just before Christmas sends him back home to Memphis, Tennessee, where he grapples not only with his own sense of mortality and inadequacy, but also over his inattention as an only child, both recently and years earlier, to dying parents. The trip home also reunites him with a lost love, a woman whose betrayal led him to leave Memphis in the first place.

While sorting through his father's personal papers before the funeral, Miles discovers his grandmother's diary and a packet of old letters written between his grandparents in 1937. On the heels of the Great Depression, as a young married couple and new parents in rural America, Leonard and Mabel Buffett found themselves facing a seemingly insurmountable mountain of debt. To try to dig out from under it, Leonard traveled to Bucklin, Kansas, following the promise of gainful employment in the wheat fields, leaving his young wife, Mabel, and their infant son behind on the dusty plains of New Mexico. As Miles delves into his grandparents' writings of love, loneliness, and hardship, he uncovers a family secret kept buried for more than 80 years.

The novella is split between modern day and the first half of the 20th Century, inspired by letters written between my grandparents in 1916. There is also a little bit of self-reflection in the book as the central characters comes to grips with the deaths of his parents, much as I did. My mother passed away in 1978 and my dad in 1993. So, in honor of my parents and grandparents, I'm posting pictures of all four, including one of my personal favorites, my dad and grandfather boxing.