Harmony House

In Harmony House, Dan Boyle attempts to adapt to his new life as a recent widower. His serial infidelities and alienation from his wife preceding her death haunt him, and as much as he wants to insulate himself from family, friends and neighbors, "untethering" from relationships proves difficult. Shedding obligations is easier wished than done. As he examines his behavior during his marriage and following his wife's diagnosis and death, Dan accepts that he has failed to live up to his own standards, much less the standards of others. He is torn between admitting his shortcomings and ignoring them. Will he change and live his life as a decent man? Or will he persist in placing his own hedonistic impulses before the needs of others? Is redemption what he needs? Is it what he seeks? Or is it superfluous? A chain that tethers him to a life he wants to forget.

John M. McNamara’s short fiction has been published in Crosscurrents, Old Hickory Review, the Piedmont Literary Review, the Minotaur, Snapdragon, Four Quarters, FlashFiction, Quick Fiction, Bear River Review and Inside Running. In the summer of 1999, he was awarded a professional artist residency at the OxBow Summer Arts Program for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Saugatuck, Michigan. He lives in a suburb of Chicago, Illinois with his wife. He is the author of the novels A Life Without Grace, A Final Reflection, and Hunter’s War, A Novella, and Selected Short Stories, and Harmony House all available from Amazon.com.