SUMMER DEPARTURES

At the end of a post-grad week in a Newport Beach cottage, David's college friends are leaving for professional careers, as is his girlfriend who surprises with a gleefully delivered humiliating goodbye. Not so David, who's dozen applications for an editing or writing job have yet to produce interviews.

Strong-willed women abound with comedic overtones as an impromptu backyard tryst is interrupted by a vacuum cleaner salesman, a going-away party for a former girlfriend where he is the only guest and his college degree is mocked by her high-school dropout brother who lives off vulnerable women, and when taken in hand by a wildly impulsive rock and roll beauty, he finds himself along for the ride until she ultimately moves on and up, but along the way her confidences gives him insight into what is beneath the glam and glitter, and of his own rightful place in life.

The job rejections trickle in, and a reunion with his successful college friends causes him to realize he must take his fate in hand if he is to achieve his dream of professional writer.

SUMMER DEPARTURES is Book II in the series The Vitality of Seeing Life.