THE
END IS NEAR is a tale of childhood trauma, vengeance, and angelic interventions
that charts one man’s unusual journey toward forgiveness, self-acceptance, and
enlightenment.
On
his forty-fifth birthday, as his hostages slept and state police prepared to take him by force, Nathan Huffnagle placed the cold circle of a shotgun barrel beneath his chin and gripped the trigger. The end was near. Or so he believed.
His
last act—a proper revenge upon his childhood nemesis, Randy Trent—had
deteriorated into a farcical hostage standoff beset by a media circus, a
combustible romantic rivalry among his captives, and the undeniable reality
that Randy Trent, a vicious thug and bully twenty-five years before, had grown
up to become a man too humble, too good, too exasperatingly decent to kill.
Nathan pulled the trigger. And his life began again.
Weeks later, Nathan wakes in a hospital bed to a new assignment, delivered to
him by a series of seemingly angelic visitors. Nathan must write a new suicide
journal on the backs of the pages of a court transcript of his previous suicide
journal. And this time, he must tell the truth, the painful and possibly
liberating truths he was forced to confront about himself during the hostage
situation.
Is
Nathan up to the task? Or is he
losing what’s left of his mind? Will his search for the truth grant him the death he seeks? Or a new lease on life? THE END IS NEAR
consists of both of Nathan’s journals, presented in alternating entries, each
journal commenting wryly on the other, each generating its own suspense, and each
leading to a surprising conclusion. Infused with humor and sadness, restless
longing and regret, flights of fantasy and the sheer damnable contrariness of
real life, THE END IS NEAR is a tale of redemption like none you’ve read
before.
