Vivian's Song

by Tom Pointer

Overview

During the height of the dotcom era free-thinking Texas cowboy Duke Tanner becomes wealthy by investing in Bay Area technology start-ups. Duke attributes his success to his own version of the concept that wealth can be created through the power of thought and he becomes a local New Age guru. The charismatic Duke starts marketing his ideas in the San Francisco area and soon finds an eager audience during the stock market boom of the 1990s, becoming an in demand lecturer and author.
By chance Duke buys land near a small Missouri town to base his burgeoning mail order business. It turns out that Duke’s nearest neighbor is Senator Charles Wentworth, one of the most conservative members of Congress. When the local clergy become enraged by Duke’s iconoclastic writings and his criticisms of Christianity they conspire with the Senator to run him out of town. Things become more complicated when Duke befriends the heir to Senator Wentworth’s largest corporate donor and he threatens to take over the company. When Senator Wentworth hatches a plan to render Duke’s property uninhabitable Duke responds in an unexpected way that sparks a huge backlash. Everything comes to a head during a massive protest rally in the tiny town during which both sides clash. After a near catastrophe Duke reevaluates his motives and changes his message to mixed results.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940044347991
Publisher:	Tom Pointer
Publication date:	02/25/2013
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	284 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Tom Pointer graduated from Saint Edward's University with a bachelor of arts. He lives in a 600-square-foot house in the thriving, creative metropolis of Austin, Texas. One of his favorite activities is cycling the hike-and-bike trail around the city's Lady Bird Lake.

Editorial Reviews

A New Age guru and his growing flock of West Coast followers clash with Middle America's most conservative preachers and politicians in this satirical novel about faith and tolerance. Duke Tanner isn't your grandfather's spiritual advisor. The Texas-bred "redneck" led a variety of lives--football player, rodeo star, Vietnam soldier, decorated Cadillac salesman--before he started preaching about reincarnation in his San Francisco compound. So how did he come to strike it rich on the stock market, manifest himself as a pseudo–cult leader (equal parts Ken Kesey, Suze Orman and Maharishi Yogi), and land his group and their Missouri ranch in the cross hairs of a U.S. Senator and a greedy businessman? These answers are the gift and curse of Pointer's debut novel. After a compelling in media res opening, he rewinds too far and spends the novel's first half digging through the guts of a slow-moving, exposition-heavy back story. While this does an excellent job of developing Duke's character and illustrating his natural evolution from ranch boy to guru, it often does so at the expense of the novel's momentum and general flow. Plotwise, things pick up when the narrative arrives back at the heart of the conflict, but the eventual climax--tender liberals versus inhuman conservatives--doesn't make the juice worth the squeeze. While Pointer's villains tend to be one dimensional, Duke, the hero, is complex, funny and charismatic, which sometimes saves the story from the damnation of dull prose and an unbalanced plot. Unfortunately, it's not enough to convince the audience to drink the Kool-Aid. Solid characters and hearty laughs, but pacing and prose issues prevent the sermon from sticking.

Kirkus Reviews