Doctor Bob

With his life imperiled by the Mafia, Dr. Bob earns his keep by treating addicted Clairvoyants who fear they've lost their ability to reach souls in the hereafter - a rambunctious character's story told as literary fiction with a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor, according to critics. He learned to listen to the downtrodden of Skid Row by indulging in the ubiquitous squalor of their misery. Then he scrubbed up to court female patients beyond all ethical boundaries. The true love he found...
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With his life imperiled by the Mafia, Dr. Bob earns his keep by treating addicted Clairvoyants who fear they've lost their ability to reach souls in the hereafter - a rambunctious character's story told as literary fiction with a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor, according to critics. He learned to listen to the downtrodden of Skid Row by indulging in the ubiquitous squalor of their misery. Then he scrubbed up to court female patients beyond all ethical boundaries. The true love he found demanded that he straighten up and fly right. Wrapped up in the mysteries of the Universe as a sort of security blanket, he wandered toward infinity and his mysterious destination, an awkward pioneer of self-discovery.His exploitations ranged from creating one of Florida's most pristine upscale treatment centers to dallying in West Coast neighborhoods named after Tarzan of the Apes.Along the way Dr. Robert Bennett pioneered the kind of treatments that put nutty astrophysicists back on track to explore the Universe, observe time run backwards to the exploding Hindenburg where the fallen zeppelin actually went unnoticed. He learns from the scientists he treats the Albert Einstein belief that imagination is the preview of life's coming attractions. So, Dr. Bob indulged his adventurous life as best he could imagine it. Complete and unadulterated.As in all his novels the author remains steady in his belief that well-written literary fiction doesn't have to be "highbrow"; it has to embrace ideas about destiny in a storyline that holds the readers' attention and occasionally prompts laughter. No room for the hoity-toity. In "Doctor Bob" Kelton's characters are marvelously extraordinary, eccentric and bizarre. They are just as real as Studs Terkel's real folks in "The Great War." Instead of a war to bind them together, they share the odyssey of a fantasy.