More Hope

Not that I need any reassurance that moving to Henderson and always having Las Vegas available is the right path for me, but it's always nice to have those moments along the way to it that give more than you thought was there. Much more. And I've already thought there to be so much to look forward to already.

I'm reading a novel called Greyhound, published by AmazonEncore, about a 11-year-old, nearly 12, who's put on a Greyhound bus in Stockton, California by his feckless, uncaring mother, pushing him off to Altoona, Pennsylvania to live with his father's grandmother (a father who left long ago), because she doesn't want him to interfere with her new life with her new man, Dick, another man in a long line of men. This is a three-and-a-half day journey for the boy, with many well-defined characters along the way, the best so far being the kindly Mr. Hastings, working behind the ticket counter at the Los Angeles Greyhound terminal, and Marcus Franklin, his seatmate out of Los Angeles, a Langston Hughes and Miles Davis conoisseur.

I'm only on page 58, out of 240 pages, and I love this novel. I was on page 20 a few minutes ago and I knew that it was going into my permanent collection. Most important to me is where AmazonEncore seems to be based. On the copyright page, there's a P.O. Box address that ends with "Las Vegas, NV 89140."

Great literature does exist in, and come out of, Las Vegas. It is a place for readers and writers just as much as it is for dreamers. I will be proud to be part of it, because there's so much to see, so much to feel, so much to write about. From there, anything is possible for me, and AmazonEncore's existence gives me more hope. Maybe it was just a matter of convenience for the company, to not have that division ensconced in a thickly-populated metropolis. Even so, they have the right idea. The writers that fuel AmazonEncore may not come from Las Vegas (Steffan Piper, the author of Greyhound, lives in Los Angeles), but the books themselves do. The city is part of yet another valuable service.