Guayala Junction

. The Brodtskys -- Charlie, Steve and Bobby- choose to settle in Guayala Junction for vastly different reasons, but each of them are seeking some sort of refuge. Charlie, the father, arrives first, needing to leave the bullshit bureaucracy of the New York City Police Department. He has been tracking Guayala Junction's Sheriff's Department for a few years, waiting for his opportunity, and when the sheriff of thirty years announces his retirement, Charlie moves quickly and decisively....
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. The Brodtskys -- Charlie, Steve and Bobby- choose to settle in Guayala Junction for vastly different reasons, but each of them are seeking some sort of refuge. Charlie, the father, arrives first, needing to leave the bullshit bureaucracy of the New York City Police Department. He has been tracking Guayala Junction's Sheriff's Department for a few years, waiting for his opportunity, and when the sheriff of thirty years announces his retirement, Charlie moves quickly and decisively. Steven Brodtsky, the older son, arrives in this Central Californian town of 100,000, after Charlie swoops into New York on the red-eye, somehow knowing his son needs a change of scenery and attitude. Within hours, they are flying back, U.P.S. packages with Steve's meager belongings already shipped. Before the car accident, Steve had been a well-respected expressionistic painter and associate professor at New York University. Now, he spends most of his day wondering how other paraplegics lead productive, seemingly content lives. The more he thinks about this, the deeper his despair grows.Bobby follows almost a year after Steve, leaving a thriving Park Avenue psychiatric practice and a nasty divorce behind him. He is worn out, directionless and suspicious of all women. Guayala Junction replenishes Bobby: it soothes, palliates, washes over him and restores. The new lives his brother and father have made in this quaint, half-tourist, half-resident town motivates him to seek something new. Charlie and Steve's indomitable strength and resolve ground Bobby, as if he is some highly charged wire.Bobby relaxes for six months, mostly playing golf, and then starts a small-town, hands-on therapeutic practice. Charlie, a widower of five years, marries Uma Janzen, one of Guayala's wealthiest residents. He has never been more content. Steve starts painting again, mostly nudes of his lover and mentor, Shellie Tuesday.Shellie is the most beautiful and talented woman Steve has ever seen. Needless to say, she is certainly the most exciting, enigmatic and troubled woman he has ever loved. Shellie Tuesday is a "Survivor" of ritual cult abuse, who refuses to allow herself be defined by her tormentors, and has become an acclaimed artist and poet within the past ten years.Life is good for all three Brodtskys until Shellie is bludgeoned to death in her house, symbols of ritual cut abuse carved all over her body. Charlie investigates each suspect: Gaspar Ortega, Shellie's Cuban-American art dealer and sometimes lover; Ken Wregman, owner of Guayala's finest restaurant, Bobby's golf partner, and Shellie's occasional lover; Frederic Tuesday, Shellie's father, who mysteriously appears in Guayala Junction only a few days after his daughter's murder. The media hordes descend on Guayala Junction like locusts on crack. Among the many television journalists is an ex-patient of Bobby's, Donna Rederson. He reluctantly and apprehensively becomes romantically involved with her. The ethics of having a sexual relationship with an ex-patient gnaws at Bobby, but his desire to be whole again propels him down a frightening emotional path. Donna is special and he does not want to lose her, but he also never wants to lose himself again. Guayala Junction is certainly the story of solving a murder, but its heart and soul is contained in relationships: lover to lover, husband to wife, father to sons and brother to brother.