Apology to Grouse Creek
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About the Book
Robert Henry Wright Jr., a resident of the Idaho Panhandle since 1988, has published Apology to Grouse Creek, Book I of the Sandpoint trilogy, as a novel set in the Sandpoint, Idaho, area. Wright categorizes Apology to Grouse Creek as a love story, an action story, and as personal relations in an outdoor setting.
Nathaniel lives on a high, mountain plateau where he has everything he wants, except for a woman. Esmeralda lives in a big city; she needs a place to hide. Esmeralda sees a personal ad for a woman in a newspaper, and she responds. Esmeralda and her child, Chico, join Nathaniel in the mountains, and the three meld into a family trinity.
As the story unfolds, the reader learns that Nathaniel is a member of The Family, the most wealthy and influential family in the northern five counties of the Idaho Panhandle; and that there has been a lifelong rift between Nathaniel and his parents due to him not responding to their ambitions for him. The reader also learns that Esmeralda is a fugitive from a motorcycle gang at Los Angeles, and that the gang’s leader has revenge on his mind.
The antagonists, Rolf and Delpha, enter the story: They fear that a full-blown, planet-wide battle is inevitable between poverty and wealth. Consequently, Rolf installs himself and Delpha into a remote mountain location where he intends to build a fortress for defending his money and surviving the social cataclysm. However, Rolf soon learns that someone lives above and behind him, and his paranoia compels him to banish Nathaniel and Esmeralda from the plateau by any means necessary, including murder. To accomplish this objective, Rolf employs the forces of money; he uses Esmeralda’s dubious past; ultimately, Rolf kills Nathaniel’s dog—an act that Nathaniel is not capable of forgiving.
In addition to the primary plot, there is another storyline: Victoria and Stanislaus. She yearns to establish and operate a cooperative art gallery to promote artwork from the local artists. He is a sculptor with great promise, but with a perplexing reputation for rowdiness. Stanislaus and Victoria polarize the Idaho Panhandle when his statuette, The Harlot, is accepted by her gallery and offered for sale at Sandpoint for the astonishing price of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Apology to Grouse Creek
Robert Henry Wright Jr. was born in Puerto Cabezas, Republic of Nicaragua, Central America. He immigrated to Texas, USA, at the age of ten. After high school, he served in the USAF; had a brief stint at the University of Texas; and then settled into the petroleum industry, working in sales and service in the drilling and production segments—from Comodoro Rivadavia to the North Slope of Alaska—until taking early retirement in 1988. His occupational travels included a one year residency at Buenos Aires during 1962. After retirement at age fifty-six, Robert and his wife, Carol, began anew when they moved from bustling Houston to a remote ten acres on the north fork of Grouse Creek in the Idaho Panhandle to pursue his desire to write. At Grouse Creek they adapted to living without municipal amenities—without electricity, water, telephone, etc. The Wrights came in from the woods in 2001, moving into nearby Sandpoint where they reside today. Robert Henry Wright, Jr. is the author of The Sandpoint Trilogy which comprises the three novels Apology to Grouse Creek, Ten Percent Marriage, and All Things Flow. He is also the author of the novella Papelón.About the Author