Books by Dan Morgan
A weak American President, constricted by politics and prior commitments, is unable to lead his nation in a time of domestic crisis. He sits atop an ineffectual government made all the more fragile by his own shaky qualifications for the office. Although Americans everywhere might believe W. Harris Archer simply to be the weakest President in history, the truth is that Archer’s moribund leadership is not entirely due to a lack of will or ability. Instead, there is something else at work, a secret noose around his neck that threatens to tighten if he doesn’t make good on a long-held debt. The saving of the country must come second to a President saving himself from disgrace.
From the author of ‘Stamp People’, The Last Drop is a fictional account of America in the middle of an extended drought, both in water and in national leadership. The story is part wry critique of Presidential inadequacy, part political detective story, and part quiet warning for the real shortage of water facing America far sooner than most people in America realize. A looming water crisis and a fight for the last drop of available water could well be the next American Civil War. The leadership challenge might be a little harder to fix.
All Larry Tieray wants to do is find the ‘good life’, but Larry is one of the ‘stamp people’ of America. Stamp people are like stray dogs: We see them during the day, we may briefly feel sorry for them, we have no idea where they go at night, and we forget completely about them as soon as they are out of our sight.
Larry tells the lively story of his life as one of the stamp people, and how he endures a ragged existence with no skill, with only a limited education, and an even more limited intellect. He’s been in prison, which is no big deal to him or people like him–it’s just a part of growing up. His family is fractured: His father never made an appearance in his life, his brother is autistic and institutionalized, and his mother is in prison on a double-murder charge that Larry ultimately learns was a strange sort of protection of the children she never seemed to care much for. Great color comes to Larry’s otherwise monochrome life when he finally realizes that having a family is really the good life he wants to live, and so he resolves to re-unite his mother, his father and his younger brother. He must do so however before his father’s new life forever takes him away from Larry’s, before his little brother’s descent into autism takes him forever away from reality, and before the State of Texas can execute his mother and forever dismember any chance for Larry to have that resurrected family which he wants most in the world. Though Larry may live a seemingly miserable life and frequently have to depend on the helping hand of sympathy to get by, he is neither an angry nor bitter man. He is a man who has learned to play with the cards he’s been dealt and never gives up hope that a better hand may someday come his way. In a deep, gray world, he still has an ability to see vivid color.