WATERTIME by Jay Harris Lucas

About the book

Richard Pensler, has never been able to talk to anyone about his feelings. This was seldom a problem for Richard in his career as a civil engineer. However, with retirement, his long repressed guilt over his son's death suddenly rises from deep within his soul. No longer able to bury his guilt in long hours of work, Richard seeks out the friendship of his twelve-year-old grandson, Jimmie. Richard finds himself becoming open and joking with his grandson. They spend countless hours together on the water fishing and talking.

Richard has a sudden outburst of tears, while fishing with Jimmie. At Jimmie's encouragement, Richard seeks out a psychologist. At first it appears Richard simply has to come to grips with aging. However, conflicts with his emotionally abusive salesman father, are uncovered as another source for Richard's malady. A marriage that has drifted to the desert of neglect, gets a new life when Richard's wife, Martha, joins him in counseling sessions. When these problems are quieted. Richard's guilt over his adult son's death emerges. The never before revealed details shake Martha and his widowed daughter-in-law, Jean. Ultimately, Richard's outpourings bring his marriage to more solid ground. It also brings a peace to the troubled relationship he has had with Jean.

Just as Richard's life seems finally in order, Seer Pense enters. Seer, a classmate of Jimmie's, is a fulminating psychological battleground. His pain is obvious to Richard, who believes he senses a kindred spirit. Seer blossoms through the unlikely development of a friendship with Richard and Jimmie. A disastrous camping and fishing trip to the Boundary Water Canoe Area of northern Minnesota seems to cement their relationship.

The fires of anger that have flamed within Seer for years, seem about to be extinguished. However, during one of their fishing outings Jimmie blows up in anger at Richard after Richard tells Jimmie about his guilt over his role in the death of Jimmie's father. Seer goes home shaken after witnessing the upsetting event. His substitute family appears to him to be crumbling. At home Seer encounters his alcoholic father once again abusing and terrorizing his mother. Seer's mother is accidentally killed by his ranting drunken father. The fires of anger flash and burst into a raging inferno and Seer kills his drunken father by emptying the chamber of his father's automatic twelve gauge into his gut.

Seer is sentenced to treatment and detention. In the juvenile correctional facility, he experiences another transformation. This time his transformation is an actualization of all that is criminal, evil, and sick within him. After three years of treatment, Seer comes up for routine review. Now practiced in the art of sociopathy, he manipulates Richard and Martha in order to obtain an early release. Richard, blinded by hope and guilt, convinces Martha to take Seer as a foster child into their home. However, Jimmie, keenly aware of the terrible changes in Seer, finds himself forced into a life and death struggle with Seer, while on a family deer hunting trip. His love for Jimmie forces the usually passive Richard to act. In marked contrast to his inaction that cost him his son, Richard takes bold action and saves his grandson's life.

About the author

WATERTIME is Dr. Jay Harris Lucas's fourth fiction novel. He has forty fiction and non-fiction publications in a variety of commercial and literary magazines. Dr. Lucas, a highly respected clinical psychologist, has been a multiple term president and held several other offices in Minnesota psychological associations. He was awarded the Corrigan for outstanding contributions to the field of psychology. Dr. Lucas has hosted two different radio call-in shows discussing mental health questions. His writings draw heavily on his thirty years as a practicing psychologist. Dr. Lucas has been listed in Who's Who in the Midwest six times and once in Who's Who in America.

Dr. Lucas has been an avid fisherman since he first discovered the wonders of water in the first grade, when his family moved next to the Mississippi river. In high school and college he was on many varsity sports teams, but it was while on his internship in Norwich, Connecticut that he discovered the lure of long distance running. Dr. Lucas has run in twenty-two marathons and hundreds of shorter races as well as having been race director for several local races. He held several offices with his local track club and was three term president of his local track club. These efforts earned him the Pierson award for outstanding contributions to the sport of long distance running. Sixty-five thousand miles later, he still runs several times a week.

In 1964 Dr. Lucas married Lois, his high school sweetheart. They have a son and a daughter and three grandsons.