Greensleeves

About the Book

The novel Greensleeves follows the wanderings of a teacher/artist (J) who, arriving at the end of daily endurance, sets out one spring evening to meet adventure, death, or whatever fate will present itself in the Rocky Mountain wilderness. The unexpected first thing to attack J will be a series of visionary insights or possible psychic communications. There follow encounters with unusual mountain dwellers and with fellow escapees from civilization, such as the pivotal character of the story, M, an ex-professor. J is the story’s narrator and point-of-view, in addition to being much given to attempts at mystical or even religious interpretations of experience. From a mountain lodge at which they all arrive, a long-time search is in progress for the missing father of the other principal character, K, whom J rightly perceives as being dangerous although he is the area’s best rock climber. But he is not only an intense and skilled climber; he appears also to be engaged in mysterious work in the wilderness. The missing father is suspected of having joined some remote inhabitants of high places who appear to be non-human or otherwordly, if not downright supernatural. They are the primary threat in these hills—or perhaps the primary promise. Certainly, interpreting their intentions is the primary puzzle for our characters. J receives clues that might benefit the search for K’s father and so is included in expeditions into wild country. It is during these excursions that M undergoes an irresistible homosexual attraction to K. Like the mountains so risky and difficult to win, K repeatedly entices and rejects M’s devotion, finally banishing M (and J with him) out of the wilderness into the big city for a period of exile. It is during this stay that J recovers lost talent and motivation. However, K calls them back. He arrives to retrieve M. Neither the consummation of their union nor M’s initiation into some of K’s mountain forays can allay the tension between them, or between M and his religious misgivings. More than one person is now missing, if not dead, and the mystery of the unknowable dwellers in the rocks is largely unanswered. M appears to have been charged with the continuation of K’s work with the mountains and interaction with the alien beings.

About the Author

Pictures are by the author: Villiers, Dyson & Vaughn is the creative signature of a painter/muralist whose education includes BFA at the University of Colorado, George Washington University, Corcoran School of Art, Instituto Allende in San Miguel Allende, years of liturgical art and church renovation, portraiture, and experimentation, who lives in foothills.