Synopsis: Take 2

I posted an earlier draft of my query/synopsis of my novel. 

Please consider my novel, "The Noise of Endless Wars" (101,562 words).  The Midwest city of Cadmus faces problems similar to those found throughout the Rust Belt: harsh winters, vast income inequality, racial tensions, and increasing urban decay.

            The Hathorne family, with its vast amounts of wealth and prestige, has dominated the social and political structure of Cadmus for over a century.  The only surviving children of this legacy, George and Virginia Hathorne, struggle with the meaning behind the family name.  George, the eldest son, renounces this legacy and the dark, brutal history it hides under its fortune.  As an exile within the city, he finds his life's purpose in sexual copulation with a variety of women and, when he can, in fighting his younger sister who now runs the Hathorne Corporation.  Through her indomitable will, Virginia has built an even greater family fortune through both legal and illegal means.  Her older brother sees her efforts as the continuation of the evil and inequality that has been carried on since his great-great grandfather, a notorious Indian fighter, settled the once tiny village and renamed it after the mythical founder of Thebes. 

            On the other side of town another set of siblings try to survive the city and its hardships, coming to grips with a past that renders them both captive and immobile.  Emmanuel Lyon, just out of prison, repudiates his past misdeeds and hopes to start a new life. He decides the only way he can advance is through seeking out the father who killed his mother when he was only a child.  Ultimately he will discover a half-sister he has never known.  Isabel Butler, a woman also without a father or mother, feels trapped in a hapless cycle of stagnation from which she cannot escape.  After finally making some progress in her life she’ll then be forced to face the father who abandoned her and make a horrifying decision.  She and her brother will then have to learn to rely on one another if they are to progress beyond an unforgiving past. 

            These four separate protagonists and their separate paths and world views eventually cross after events bring them together in a moment that may forever change them all and the city they inhabit.

            The first five parts of the novel focus on both sets of siblings and at various points of their lives, past and present, in order to capture the experiences that lead to the closing events of the novel.

            I am a graduate of Western Michigan University with a Bachelors’ in English and Sociology. Also, I have written a novel and currently writing an anthology of short stories. I have a Masters Degree in Library and Information Sciences and am currently working in metro Detroit for a distributor of foreign language materials.