The tempo runs from edge-of-your-seat epic prose to soothing sonnet, melding thoughts of pristine rain forests, turquoise sea, and snowdrifts in Manhattan. Some award-winners were recited at the University of South Florida (USF) campus in St. Petersburg, where such poems as, "The Horn of Wynton Marsalis", "My Father Had a Rhett Butler Smile", and "Pathos" brought accolades and notoriety to the author. If you ever had qualms about Songs of Solomon being a part of the Bible, you may have something else to think about after reading Caribbean Spell.
Urban Saint is Ken McCarty Bird's first work of fiction. Saint or sinner; both are players in this saga of a conflicted marriage and recounting the tragedy and triumph of Victoria and Gabriel's relationship that is imperiled by addiction. The romance between them blossoms into a resplendent nuptial, the nuptial gradually and incrementally losing its petals until what remains becomes volatile and guarded. This would soon send the relationship into a tailspin when tragedy strikes. The events escalate into a terrifying climax when one of them, a healthy psychologist with feet firmly planted in the church, career, and community shockingly succumbs to a stroke that leads to a coma. On one level this is the emergent panic button pushed, the triage in the emergency room, the ICU's protocol around the clock in desperation to save life, as one slips deeper and deeper into unconsciousness. And yet on another level, somewhere near heaven's gate, the edge of eternity comes the divine caricature where all that is discerned through the five senses or the lack of it, is the unknown factor of the spirit to be embraced; where one is able to receive all that is presented within the minute parameters of earthly existence: reality perceived in flashes of colors the mere semblance of peach, orange, crimson, and a deep blue; the language that is speechless, the wonders that are unspeakable, for no tongue can express it better than the language of permeation -all things within and without like an all-encompassing spirit; the perception being crisp, vivid, eloquent and bright. While the ICU staff diligently tries to save what is left, a prayerful family vigil waits in the chasm of uncertainty and with an inferno of questions: What kind of future is left for the one who has sunk so deeply into alcoholism that one is like a prisoner at the beck and call of Ole Man Liquor, and whose soul seems to be lost to the point of being an unwitting accomplice in Satan's schemes? And for the other, what chance of a future is left when the existence remains precarious at best -one's hold on humanity slipping away, hanging by a thread to dear life on earth, while heaven seems to beckon. This is the enigma, suspense, and intrigue of Urban Saint.
Separation anxiety eclipses grief within a peculiar twelve-hour window where two tragedies occur in two separate cities. For newlywed Victoria Quinn in Midwestern Florida, her husband Gabriel could see the separation coming. He could see it coming out of the chronic stage of the addiction that affects their marriage. For Katherine Jackson in California, Michael's struggle is similar but not as ominous, yet he dies the next day from an overdose. Victoria is in the church where she can be heard at times singing, 'Give me Jesus'. But what she receives outside those walls is another spirit whose powerful grip leads her towards a similar trip as Michael. The events escalate into a terrifying climax when one of them, a healthy psychologist with feet firmly planted in the church, career, and community shockingly succumbs to a stroke that leads to a coma. On one level this is the emergent panic button pushed, the triage in the emergency room, the ICU's protocol around the clock in a desperate effort to save life, as one slips deeper and deeper into unconsciousness. And yet on another level, somewhere near heaven's gate, the edge of eternity, comes the divine caricature... URBAN SAINT is a compelling 150,000 words romantic suspense page-turning trilogy; set in a city within minutes of Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico; and has the intrigue to grip the attention of the reader from start to finish. In a world where millions of people are as much preoccupied with work and earnings, marriage and romance, spirituality and health; as they are with Near Death Experiences, Urban Saint serves up a delightful blend of all four that is apt to be a crowd-pleaser in the tradition of spellbinding love stories.
