Shades of Retribution by Will Clark

About the book

This story is set primarily in Mississippi, with two time settings. The first is a current-day situation resulting from a confrontation between an elderly African-American couple and three men in an old truck displaying a Confederate flag. The couple feels the tension and fears that they believe were typical of a long time ago, but not today.

When the three men harass the old couple on the highway, they don't know if they are harassed because of their race, from an act of road rage, or for a more targeted reason. During the road chase, the truck goes off a bridge and only one man survives. The couple decides to help the lone survivor, and from incoherent remarks the survivor makes them believe they were specifically targeted from something that happened to the man's daughter. The brief encounter creates many questions for the couple about their safety. Their search and information from the flashback help answer their questions.

The second setting, the flashback, contains the major action. Immediately at the end of the Civil War, two young farm hands are afraid to report the murder of a land owner and the abduction of a young girl because they know they will be the major suspects, since they are black and were traveling with the victims. Although they attempt to help the victims they are targeted as eh criminals. Eventually, they are captured and one is killed. The second escapes and goes to New York where he becomes educated. He later returns and tries to reunite the abducted girl, grown at this time, with her family. She was too young at the time of her abduction to know how to return home. His effort fails because destitute economic conditions in the old home area had caused her family and others to abandon their farm land and relocate, without leaving forwarding information.

Returning to the current setting, the elderly couple and the survivor of the truck crash resolve their differences by learning that their past was related. The abducted girl was the man's great-great-aunt, thought to have been killed during that abduction. The young man who tried to help was an ancestor of the elderly couple.

About the author

Will Clark is a retired military officers, serving in the U.S. Air Force from 1957 to 1978, including overseas assignments in Japan, Vietnam, Turkey, and the Philippines. He is also a life member of Optimist International, after serving four years as an Optimist Club president and one year as an Optimist lieutenant governor. He has a Business degree from the University of Nebraska.

He has finished his second novel, The Atlantis Crystal, which is the first book of a trilogy. The trilogy is influenced by his visits to many archeological sites, including ancient Troy and the seven Biblical churches, while he was stationed in Turkey.

He is originally from Union, Mississippi, where, in his youth, he lived the farm life described by scenes in this book, Shades of Retribution. Now, he lives with his wife, Marie, in Diamondhead, Mississippi, where they play golf and tennis. They have two children and seven grandchildren.