L. S. Miller

A Death in Our Family L. S. Miller

Lassiter 'Last' Chance Barkley will soon be a dead man, a year plus or minus. What does a man who spent his career building gas stations and convenience stores leave as his legacy? And how can he provide after the fact for his children and girlfriend? For Last, the best he can do is try to unite his family and create a home for all of them. He and Amanda, his beautiful quirky lover of six years, embark via motorhome on a quest to find that place and through sheer happenstance or so Last thinks, meet Greta Ann Foy, a crusty former military psychic turned antiques dealer with enough war related citations, including the Medal of Honor, to make her perhaps the most decorated female ever to serve. She sends them to an FBI agent/Robert E. Lee Civil War reenactor to confirm her bona fides so that they can buy her business and home and allow her to go on the road, around the world to all the places she was stationed in WW II, Korea and Vietnam. She surreptitously hooks them up with a local family to help them with the antique business that they suddenly own but don't have the tools to operate. At first. She ochestrates a rapprochement with his two daughters for Last and Amanda's wedding whose guests are dressed in blue and gray and trailing horse drawn cannons. With the aid of a host of Carolina country folks, they create a life unimaginable prior to Last's diagnosis. Death is a tragedy but the foreknowledge is a gift, one that Last uses to its fullest.