Böcker av Cecil Thomas

The story begins in a farm area in rural Kentucky in the early fifties. It follows the journey of three sixteen-year-old close friends whose lives were upended by tragedy.Tommy met Luke and Rachel at a drive-in theater, where Tommy was the projectionist. The three teens quickly became close friends often going out for milkshakes together. Tommy and Rachel were attracted to one another but never acted upon their feelings because Rachel was Luke's girlfriend. The three of them gathered almost weekly on a nearby farm owned by Sarah and her husband. Sarah enjoyed seeing the kids and soon became a mother figure to them.Toward the end of their senior year of high school, Luke and Rachel went to a nearby city where Rachel underwent a botched abortion. Driving back, Rachel nearly died from bleeding, but that was not the worst part. They knew that their church would stone them to death. Tommy and Sarah persuaded Rachel and Luke to run away. They helped Rachel and Luke establish new identities, severed all ties with family and friends, and drove away to some unknown place. Sarah and Tommy grieved their departure but knew that it would save their lives.Sarah and Tommy maintained contact, and when Tommy became a single father of two in St. Louis, Sarah moved to St. Louis to help Tommy with his kids. Tommy was a successful professor, and Sarah managed their finances.Rachel (now Abby) and Luke (now Carl) escaped to Iowa, where Abby worked in a small medical clinic with one doctor. She and Carl lived on a farm which Carl managed. Carl died in an accident, leaving Abby with their two children.After fourteen years of separation and a bit of serendipity, Abby, a doctor, and Tommy meet at Stanford University. It was an unexpected and joyous reunion.Tommy and Abby quickly merged their families and, along with Sarah, settled in a house adjacent to the Stanford campus. They both enjoyed successful careers at Stanford and increased the size of their family to eight kids. Although far from rural Kentucky, where their journeys began, they still enjoyed sharing milkshakes.

This heartwarming story involves three couples whose friendship and mutual respect deepen into a loving family relationship that remains strong through the years despite a few bumps along the way.Dylan, Steve, and Carl are college friends, all single, who work and play together like brothers. Carl starts a business in Durham, North Carolina; Steve starts a similar business in St. Louis; and Dylan becomes a college professor in St. Louis.The story initially focuses on Dylan, whose wife left him for a mutual friend after eleven years of marriage. He was extremely depressed, but is cheered by a fellow professor, Ann, who invites him to the St. Louis Zoo with her and her two kids. Dylan and the kids visit and play with the lemurs at the zoo. The kids love the lemurs and are equally enamored with Dylan.An unexpected cascade of events follows that changes Dylan's life, although he remains in touch with Ann on a platonic basis.Dylan's plane crashes en route to Durham, where Dylan is sent to facilitate a possible merger between Steve's and Carl's companies.Dylan meets Tessa, a fellow passenger on the plane. Tessa is a scholar at the Lemur Center at Duke University. Tessa and Dylan begin a romantic relationship.Tessa's two friends become romantically involved with Dylan's two friends, Carl and Steve, which results in Dylan and Steve relocating to Durham from St. Louis so all three couples could be together.The couples, all professionals, decide to restore a large house containing separate suites for each couple with common living spaces. Their careers and businesses prosper. Dylan gets to accompany Tessa to Madagascar, where Tessa researches the behavior of lemurs. Then Ann, Dylan's platonic friend in St. Louis, becomes ill and needs help with her two kids. Upon learning of Ann's illness, Tessa and the others relocate Ann and her children to their home. Then Tessa leaves, Ann dies, and Dylan adopts the kids. He loves the kids, and with the support of his friends, he eventually cultivates a successful and lasting relationship with Margo, a victim of domestic violence.The three couples spend many happy years together raising Ann's children and even vacationing in Madagascar, where they dance with ring-tailed lemurs.

A wealthy woman named Dola decided to address some larger problems faced by the US. She knew she could not work alone on such big issues, so she recruited a group of seven young people in their late twenties. The group became known as Team Dola. She explained that the group of seven would not do all the work on a selected project. Instead, the group would recruit experts who could do most of the work. In other words, Team Dola would initiate a project that others would implement. Their first of four projects involved desalinating Pacific Ocean water and pumping the fresh water into rivers to supplement irrigation. The second project addressed the problem of wildfires by replacing traditional controlled burning with mulching. A third project arose from their concern for missing persons. The fourth project addressed the problem of sinking cities, with focus on New Orleans. The young members of Team Dola approach their tasks using unconventional and offbeat methods with surprising successes. They engage allies from multiple government agencies, members of the Navajo Nation, California farmers, and even Louisiana politicians. They also manage to have fun and experience romances and disappointments, all while growing into a close-knit formidable team that successfully addresses our nation's pressing problems.