The Enterprise Illusion Mystery

About the Book

Kenneth Thorne, a welfare case worker in Portland, Oregon, has suffered from amnesia for sixteen years.  The only clue to his past identity is a photograph of a beautiful young woman, the words Love, Kitty, on the back.

Ken has a recurrent dream always ending with a shadowy female figure partly hidden behind an elderly man being attacked in an old house.  On a California news broadcast, he spots a statue in the town of Enterprise identical to the one in his dream.  He decides to travel there.

The situation in Enterprise is highly unusual.  The seven members of the city council are major shareholders in Geist, Inc., a company involved in a scheme to build condominiums secretly equipped with unique TV systems.  They have been created to keep residents immersed in illusion and thus unconscious of their higher selves, rendering them puppets of the company's malevolent purpose.  The proposed condo locations are the six places where Ken worked before settling in Portland.  

With the help of a nurse named Sally whose family lives in the Enterprise condominium project, he learns the details of the council's plan: to block the spiritual growth of a critical mass of people in the seven energy centers of the planet.  He also learns the scheme is based upon the revelations sixteen years ago of a man named Robert Catt.  Only Dr. Crowle, a current member of the council, had access to Robert's transformative insight  

That year, Robert's grandfather, Harry Catt, was murdered, the death blamed on Robert who subsequently disappeared.  Within days, Catt Enterprises was taken over by Geist, Inc., whose chairman is the current mayor.

When Ken goes to the mayor's house, his wife answers the door: he recognizes the woman in his photograph - it is Kitty.  She tells him he is Robert Catt, the man she was engaged to sixteen years ago.  He falls in love with her again.  Although his memory has not returned, he continues to have the dream which always ends the same way.  

Kitty persuades Robert they have a second chance at happiness in Mexico only if they expose her husband's crimes, which include the death of Robert's grandfather and the global condominium scheme.  

When he goes to her house to take her away, he has a violent fight with her husband; she convinces Robert he has killed him.  On the drive out of town, his memory begins to return: he recalls the events of sixteen years before.

Book Description (cont.)

How he prostituted his spiritual discovery, sacrificing his family's company along with his memory and life purpose.  And how he provided Dr. Crowle with the information the seven members of the council have used in their plan.

An hour south of town, Kitty tells Robert they could never be happy together, but doesn't explain why before continuing south on her own.

He returns to Enterprise, helping Sally and her family move from the condominium.  Then he goes to the house where he grew up and where Kitty lived with her husband.  There he discovers that the mayor is alive - and who he is.

Now he understands the final part of his dream and recognizes Kitty as the murderous figure in it.  With the return of his memory, he is free from this illusion and the many others that have haunted him from his past.

He will go to Mexico with Sally.  But on certain warm nights, he will remember Kitty.

And dream of her.

About the Author

Born in Oregon, having traveled in Mexico, Canada, and various European countries (including Spain where I met my wife in Barcelona), I find myself back in Oregon where I teach at a community college and write before, between, and after classes. I am currently instructing courses in speech, small group communication, interpersonal communication, persuasion, and sociology. I am also writing novels: three completed, three others drafted, and another in the planning stage. My novels seem not to reside comfortably in any one particular category or genre. The Enterprise Illusion Mystery is probably best-described as a combination philosophical debate, spiritual quest, love story, adventure, and, of course, mystery (or rather a series of them). I hope it is as exciting to reflect upon as to read.