The Second Hill

The Second Hill is a historical, "futuristic" novel that takes the reader from September 11, 2001 to June 7, 2043. The settings are Washington, D.C., London, San Francisco, New Orleans, Manhattan, and Paris. The unusual tale begins on that infamous day when terrorism reached America's shore and ends almost forty-two years later with a startling revelation about the Creator's reaction to (1) the carnage of "9/11" and (2) the evil that caused it. The Second Hill examines the eternal conflicts between good and evil, theism and atheism, moral absolutism and moral relativism, individualism and collectivism, capitalism and socialism, and honesty and deceit - conflicts that, in the final analysis, are about the same thing. The main characters speak and behave much unlike ordinary people. That is as it should be; extraordinary individuals do not carry on in ordinary fashion. The protagonists are uncommonly intellectual, but they are by no means elitist. They are not of the intelligentsia. Though danger and death continually threaten them, Christa Joyner, Jack Joyner, Alan John, and their cohorts never cower. They are as valiant as they are brilliant. They are as fearless as they are pure. The Second Hill is atypical of fiction in that it contains copious historical and expository endnotes. Endnotes are requisite here because the narrative is grounded in history, and explanation is absolutely necessary to help the reader understand the philosophical, theological, and political aspects of the plot. Essentially, The Second Hill is about Western civilization, Western values, and Western heroes. Hopefully, it will cause most of those who peruse its pages to think deeply about where the world is and where it most certainly will wind up if it continues down the slippery slope of relativism. Many will see this compelling novel as a conservative manifesto. That is what it is.