The Fall of Jack Edgerton — Robert C. Lee

A compelling story of success, deterioration, infidelity and how the unexpected shapes events, this is a novel about the destruction of Jack Edgerton, the General Manager of a typical family department store, Gladstone's. He is a hard working, well respected and loved executive with a fine home and family - with an exception.Elaine Johnson is young and sexy. Pretty, gregarious and smart, she is from a second generation dust bowl migrant family. With a horrific event as a young girl behind her, she is changed but not destroyed. After completing high school, she escapes an unfaithful relationship by moving Ledyard and working at Gladstone's. Determined to have a better life, not sure of what she wants but certain of what she doesn't, she sees Jack as her ideal of what a love interest should be. Jack, at first unwittingly, and then more willingly, is slowly enticed into an affair.Increasingly distracted by strengthening desire and a gravity pull of guilt, a toll is gradually taken on his family. Susan, Jack's wife, struggles with his changed behavior and tries to understand its source. Infidelity, so impossibly out of character, is never considered. After a major promotional event at Gladstone's, ending with a consummating night with Elaine, fear of exposure leads him to an accidental fall down the escalator. After weeks in a coma, struggling to recover fully, he returns home, disoriented and not the same Jack. Wife and family no longer know him and increasingly confused, he reluctantly returns to work. His blurred memory of, and yearning for Elaine, flash in and out like a mistimed strobe light. Elaine is unaware of his condition and anticipates when he returns to work they will pick up where they left off. She quickly realizes that he's not the man she knew, his condition continues to deteriorate and it doesn't end well. Not well at all.