Sally's Magic River

I am a retired molecular genetics scientist who has authored and co-authored well over 50 patents and academic publications. Sally's Magic River is my only work of fiction. I wrote the story over twenty years ago and first published it as Sally and the magic River in 2014. I am republishing the story in this new format with its new cover and title, Sally's Magic River. Why? Because I think Sally's story may turn out to be the most important thing I've written. When I was 10, life as I knew it came to an abrupt end. One November evening in 1948, as I was trying to finish eating dinner, my father, Herbert Valentine Gaertner, a man who everybody loved dearly, including me, rose from his easy chair to speak to my mother. She was in the kitchen cleaning up. I had been left to finish eating string beans which I hated because I always gagged on them. Apparently, my mother didn't know how to remove the strings. All three of us were listening to one of our family's favorite radio shows, Mr. and Mrs. North, a fun detective series. My father rose from his chair, walked in front of the table where I was seated, came face to face with my mother and was about to speak to her when he suddenly started making a horrible noise. He abruptly collapsed to fall with a crash flat on his back. The ambulance came and we all road to the hospital together. They said my father had passed away at the hospital having had a massive heart attack. I know better. I'm sure he was all but dead by the time he hit the floor. My life turned upside down. This was and still is the worst day of my life. But in retrospect it defined me, to become, in some strange way, the best day of my life. Sally's story is a little like mine. Her life is turned upside down at the age of 10. And I know that it is a story that many people share. Many people have had great tragedies happen at an early age. Their lives, too, have been turned upside down. But, depending on what one does after such an incident, I think many people experience that magic happens over time, and have found as I have that the worst day becomes in some strange way the best day of one's life. For example, Sally and I learned the secret of the vision quest. Our visions become so real that they play like videos in our minds. In doing this we live our futures before they happen. Why wait when one can enjoy that inspiring future right now? Tragedy left me, as it does Sally, with an obsessive compulsive personality which when put to good use can lead one to persistence, focus and a knowing that one can turn vision quests into reality. This is one thing Sally's Magic River has to offer, but it is not the only thing nor even the best thing in my opinion. The best thing, as I describe it, is to be found in the audible version of Sally and the Magic River.