Abstract

ABSTRACT

Three Hours from Golden

Julie Mahfood
Department of Graduate English



What happens when a person who has already been pushed to the limit of what he can bear is given a greater load to carry? Eddie Alison has a childhood history including a severe lack of love and different types of abuse by alcoholic parents. To compound things, the only person he shares a healthy relationship with, his younger brother, drowns in a tragic accident when Eddie is 15; to make things worse, Eddie feels responsible for the drowning. In the story’s present, Eddie, now 42, is a divorced single father whose 9-year-old son, Travis, is diagnosed with a late-stage aggressive leukemia. Travis, Eddie’s only child, dies shortly into the tale. Eddie leaves his life behind and attempts to leave his pain and history with it, but finds along his journey that only by facing his weaknesses and fears can he find some measure of peace.