The Hurdy Gurdy Man

Vietnam veteran Tommy Starbuck teaches high school English in a small town in southern Ohio. But his comfortable middle-class reality comes to a screeching halt when his wife abruptly leaves him for an old boyfriend. </P><P>Starbuck becomes obsessed with reclaiming some semblance of a normal life but fate-or some mischievous god-has other plans for him. A series of bizarre events causes him to question his sanity the world's sanity. As he descends further into a surreal Season of Madness he blasts an air-raid siren with a rifle on the date of his wedding anniversary. Myron Laszlo an unkempt long-haired giant thrusts himself into Starbuck's life viewing a bullet-riddled siren as radical and antiestablishment: 'Your act of seeming violence was in reality an act of love he tells Starbuck who becomes his Hurdy Gurdy Man. </P><P>Almost as suddenly as he came into Starbuck's life Laszlo departs leaving a display of destruction in his wake. Saddened at the loss of his friend Starbuck reprioritizes his life and begins working on a novel. After realizing that normalcy can have many interpretations he decides to meet the seeming madness of Life head-on.</P>