Getting Acquainted — John Gordon

There comes a time in each man's life when he will stand before another, and give an accounting. It is a moment of inventory, reconciliation and reflection, an opportunity to acknowledge, and perhaps a time to ask for forgiveness. That time has come for Monroe. His hard life stares back at him in an unflinching mirror of pain, despair, success, failure, and fl ashes of unbridled joy. He confesses with candid detail a journey of confusion, fear, and unanticipated courage. from the counter-culture commune of California to the war-torn peril and horror of third world conflict, Monroe strives to recall the passages of a lost soul, a warrior, a lover, a devoted father, and a loyal friend. He is a young man frightened by love, and challenged with heartbreak and loneliness on his cross-country quest to discover himself. He is a grown man torn by the moral dilemmas presented between impulse and action, between fierceness and gentle peace. He is the intuitive combatant struggling to balance patriotism and duty, arrogance and humility. Overwhelmed with a sense of liberation, he presents himself to the deity he thinks he knows, to receive the judgment he fears to accept.