The Broken Jack, a novel by T.F. Torrey

It is the end of the summer of 1980 in Kingman, Arizona, and Jack Trexlor is under pressure. He's eighteen, and his father wants him to follow in his footsteps and become a doctor, but what Jack wants is to be an artist. Jack's mother supports him, but she is acting strangely. And everyone, suddenly, has secrets. The trouble boils over when Jack's girlfriend Diane is attacked, and she doesn't want to press charges. Jack simply can not accept that the perpetrator will get away with the crime, and he is determined to hold him accountable. Assisted by Diane's younger sister Elizabeth, Jack pursues a variety of ever-wilder schemes to secure justice, but everything gets progressively worse. When all his strategies are exhausted, Jack turns to religion for help—and that's when things really explode. In final desperation, Jack concocts one last, crazy, violent, unbelievable plan to set everything right. This is the quest that starts Jack on his lifelong pursuit of lost causes. These are the events that stole Jack's family, friends, and faith. This is the story of how Jack Trexlor went from a young man with a bright future to the broken Jack.

At long last, the final pieces of The Broken Jack are being glued together. It will be released in the first couple months of 2012, or my name is mudd..