Priorities

About the Book

This novel is about the fundamental changes that took place in the lives of Will, Bill, and Jackie, in less than a year, while Dewey’s priority, his oil company, will never change While at home for his mother’s funeral, Will Thomas, a petroleum engineer, watches the BP oil well in the Gulf fail, causing the government to shut down all drilling in the Gulf. Will discovers a possible oil field under his father’s 700 acre citrus farm. If Dewey Carlson, Will’s boss, can recover this oil, his company can survive. Otherwise, Carlson Oil will be bankrupt, and Will and his colleagues will lose their jobs. When Will goes to the bank, he meets the most beautiful women he’s ever seen, and falls madly in love. He decides he’s not leaving her to wait for him to return from some project on the other side of the world. Those days are over, even if it means giving up his career and becoming a citrus farmer with his dad. Bill Thomas, seeing his sons after his wife dies, realizes how much he has missed being with his sons and grandchildren, makes his top priorities the relationship with his family and their happiness, and the new members, Jackie and her daughter, Angie, that will be part of the family when Will gets married. Dewey Carlson still is obsessed with finding which politicians and bureaucrats to bribe for drilling permits, getting around roadblocks put in his way by environmentalists against all drilling, and older locals who don’t want any changes in their town. His only priority is his company.

About the Author

He has been a jazz trumpet player since 1951, playing in clubs and concert halls with some of the greatest jazz performers in the history of jazz, from Los Angeles to Chicago, Atlantic City to Florida, and New Orleans to Memphis. He still takes his All-Star Dixieland Jazz Band to concerts and festivals all over the country. A veteran of the US Air Force, he left an engineering job at IBM and moved to Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1963, to work for a large engineering research and development laboratory, on projects all over the world, retiring in 1993.