TRU/LOVE

About the Book

Josh Love is a lonely old man living the last days of his life in solitude. Surrounded by unfamiliar faces that fill the cold nursing home where he now resides, Josh reflects daily on the one thing that ever brought him joy. Staring at a picture, clasping his chest that has ached for the past sixty years, Josh is imprisoned by his memories.

Then he meets Marie. A crumpled old woman wheeling around the home, Marie is the only person to befriend the bitter, lonely old man. And after sixty years in a solitary afternoon, Josh finds himself revisiting old memories of the only time he fell in love, and how it changed his life forever.

Josh tells her of the time he met Truanna Lee, a wonderful woman who first became his best friend. But as they grew closer Josh found himself falling in love, and she with him. It was the first time in either’s life that they had experienced true love. It was the first time either knew what it felt like to be in love.

But as they found happiness together, a realization struck them, for Truanna was already pledged to another man, and he had found out about their love.

 Josh found himself faced with an unfriendly wager, proposed by Truanna’s husband. If Josh could date eight other women, then Jack Lee would pay Josh $10,000 each. If Josh could come back to Truanna after that, the Jack would back away. If Josh spoke to Truanna, or told her about the bet, then her husband would leave her, and ruin her, and ruin Josh financially too. If Josh refused the proposition, then Jack would ruin her still.

Left with no choice, Josh entered into the gamble even as a mysterious figure began following him. Realizing this man was meant to entrap him, Josh fought hard for the woman he was in love with, and discovered secrets about the mysterious figure along the way.

But Josh also learned what it meant to be in love, and he was able to show Marie through his trials that his actions for the rest of his life were only meant to show Truanna how much he loved her.

Now old and infirmed, his heart threatening to end his life before he may get to ever let the one true love know for certain, Josh sits with companionship again. But was his fight for true love in vain? Was his life of devotion and loyalty in vain? Or in that one instance in his life, had Josh really found undying love?

About the Author

Little is known about Warren Richardson, except that as a reclusive senior citizen he left this manuscript to the care of an aspiring writer for publication before his death in August of 1999. He had no family, and relished only in discussing tales from his own youth and meeting with few members of the small literary scene in north-central and north-east Arkansas, and Springfield, Missouri. The novel as presented was delivered untouched to the publisher by the aspiring writer so that Mr. Richardson’s last story could be told. Mr. Richardson had performed all necessary editing proofs of the manuscript, and asked only that the young writer deliver the short novel, which is believed to have been written sometime in the mid-eighties.