"The Crack In The Redwood Fence" Synopsis, Information, Excerpts

Excerpt #1 - "Author's Note To The Reader"
...Derived From The Preface Of The Novel As Dr. Alterwein Wrote It Twenty Years Ago...

Excerpt #2 - The first page of the book opens with this scene, introducing 46 year old George, family man, father of two, a teen age girl and a ten year old little boy. He loves his children, and so he says he also his loyal and loving wife, Margaret, who is a little younger than him...but somehow he still has 'eyes' ('whatever that means') for other, and sometimes younger women.
---Perhaps George is in mid-life...crisis?

Excerpt #3 - A stroll in the park depicting one form of many, of young teenagers in love...George's daughter Mindy and her boyfriend, Jeff...

Excerpt #4 - Introducing Little General Hospital. Think of Little General as representing 'disease in general' which unsuspectingly often strikes, and gobbles up people like a hawk. Although the main plot of the story centers around family and job and other interrelations, and the variously used interpretations of 'love,' and hedonistic drives and sexuality and excesses of materialism, the sub-plot has to do with disease and aging...which I reference in the preface to the novel...is the great equalizer of all people, humbling the boldest of the bold.
---I will say, without giving away too much so as not to spoil the storyline, that Margaret doesn't need to be humbled. She is already humble. George however is bold. Unfortunately, it is Margaret who the scene opens with looking out the window of Little General Hospital.
---It's later in the story now. A lot has happened by this time. But why should she have been the one to have been stricken with disease? And the multiple horrors of it all, breast cancer in particular, for it attacks your life...your family... and your sense of being a 'woman'!
---...And I know. I'm a compassionate man, and having practiced gynecology in the past, I learned first hand. I witnessed the pain and suffering from diseases like this, time and again...and there are times when I believe I almost felt their pain...and so I ached for them in the face their illnesses. I could not be otherwise
---...As a man of compassion, and having practiced as a gynecologist for so many years, I see things even women do not know.
---And yet, Margaret is so good, the ideal loving and caring wife and mother. So why did George finally bring himself to leave home for someone else?
---Why have family circumstances deteriorated to such a point wherein the loving wife and mother of a once happy family is there, looking out the window of Little General Hospital...forlorn and alone?
---...And she, being who she, is is too proud to tell anyone where she is...and how ill...least of all her husband George!

Excerpt #5 - This excerpt introduces 68 year old Jonathon who had gone through a middle life crisis searching for youth, thinking he could find youthfulness somewhere else other than in his wife, who he has actually loved...but then again, is this a description of love, especially when feelings of youthful inadequacy and aging get in the way, not to mention a wandering eye, and a powerful male sexual drive?
---I would remind you that I was a gynecologist at the time I wrote this novel and, admittedly, I had become somewhat sensitive to the sensibilities and feelings of women, especially when I would hear countless stories about husbands who had run off with other women. It seemed so selfish, and hurtful to them and their entire family. So I used Jonathon to represent such men.
---Unfortunately, little did I know at the time that men are not alone on this score because woman too can run off to the other side of the fence where the grass is greener for their own 'womanly' and other varieties of reasons, from mid-life crises to wants for their waning youthful appearances and misguided beliefs as to a faltering sexuality.