DAN McCALL
QUEEN OF HEARTS
Publisher: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, New York
Inside Jacket
In a vivid love story that sparkles with wit and pathos, the author of the immensely popular Jack the Bear and Bluebird Canyon takes us inside the lives of two people on the unquiet edge of middle age. The love that Joe Longstreet, widowed father of a teenage son, and Miranda McDunna, twice-divorced mother of a six-year-old daughter, feel for each other nourishes them as they struggle to hold themselves and their precarious families together.
Scenes of erotic passion alternate with touching episodes of family conflict that express the tensions, resentments, and the sometimes panicked love parents feel for their children. There is much that Joe and Miranda can’t help, but there is even more that they can do—for themselves and their loved ones.
A piercingly accurate portrayal of the California style, Queen of Hearts is a love story of contemporary family life—about how frail we are and how strong we can be.
Excerpt - Opening Page
Joshie’s all distracted at breakfast. My son sits across from me, in his rugby shirt, wolfing his waffle, trying to get a lock on a social studies test (the first thirteen states and their capitals). He’s discombobulated by his Uncle Artie’s 7 A.M. phone call about an awesome change in their Spring Ski Holiday (little switch from Squaw Valley to St. Moritz). Plus—Julie left a note in his locker, and he’s glancing over that for the umpteenth time:
Now read this carefully—It’s serious—I have to break a promise
for the first time. Meet me at early lunch!!
And just to top it off, today’s my fortieth Birthday, and Joshie’s trying to do it right for ol’ Dad (when my back’s turned, scrambling the eggs, he sneaks a little blue candle onto my waffle). I drive him to school in the old black MG, the way we always do it, he’s riding shotgun, his hair blowing six ways to Sunday, his mind going, “Albany—New York; Harrisburg—Pennsylvania,” and I say, “The best test I ever took was at Berkeley, Introduction to Philosophy. The professor put just six words on the blackboard, the whole final exam: ‘Explain the universe. Budget your time.’”
We pull into the school parking lot, and Joshie lifts himself up out of the MG. He stands there on the blacktop, leaning down over the little black door, green bookbag over his shoulder. My son the Thinker. Then he turns, trips on the curb, and passes a clot of ninth graders getting in the last Marlboro before the bell. I watch it going on in his head as he looks at the sycamores and the oleanders and the yellow school buses and other kids and the flagpole. Explain the universe. Budget your time. He turns back to me, sticks up his hands, and makes a helpless surveying motion toward all the world—Jeez, Dad, how do I deal with it all? Then he shrugs and breaks into a goofy smile.