Parable of the Rich Man

Brooks Patterson has struggled to maintain the family’s international business after the recent death of his father. The Old Fox, as he was known to friend and foe, was a publicity hound, bon vivant, and merchant of death. In his absence, Brooks discovers that while business booms worldwide, his own failing health and deteriorating sanity require a stopover in London in order to recover. But recovery remains elusive as London transforms into a liminal stage, where a kerb on The Strand might be the boundary between one world and another.

And Brooks sets out on that journey, a twenty-first-century man stepping into an ancient Celtic Wonder Tale where nothing is what it seems, where time and place are ambiguous at best, and so little is to be trusted. There we find our hero, forced to choose between the certainty of despair and the uncertainty of life in the contemporary world.

Perceptive readers have noted echoes of Chesterton and Kafka while the author signals us with glimpses of the prior art of C. S. Lewis, Walker Percy, and Thomas Mann.

In hardback, with a cloth ribbon marker.

The author, Kirk Beasley, was born into a music business family in Nashville, Tennessee. His parents were gifted songwriters. He began writing songs for Nashville music publishers at 15. He worked a number of years in the Nashville music industry as a songwriter, bass player, recording engineer, and record producer.

In addition, Kirk is a graduate of Vanderbilt University. At Vanderbilt he met and was inspired by a number of the Fugitive Poets, who included Allen Tate and Robert Penn Warren. He was encouraged to write literary fiction by Jesse Wills, the youngest of the Fugitive Poets.

After careers in the recording, musical instrument, and television industries he moved to Hawai’i where he continued to write songs and stories. And he took up surfing.

He now resides with his wife, the author Elizabeth Beasley, in County Limerick, Ireland.