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Informationen zum Autor David Lozell Martin's previous novels include international bestsellers Lie to Me and Tap, Tap and the critically acclaimed The Crying Heart Tattoo, The Beginning of Sorrows, and Crazy Love. Facing Rushmore is his eleventh book. Martin lives in the Washington, D.C. area. Klappentext David Martin has proved to be an unusually versatile writer, both of acclaimed thrillers like Lie to Me and of love stories like The Crying Heart Tattoo. Now, in Crazy Love, Martin has created remarkable characters and his richest story yet: a chronicle of passion and heartbreak.Joseph Long, known locally as Bear, is a farmer ridiculed by neighbors for his strangeness. Lonely nearly to the point of madness and so desperate for human touch, he leans against the hands of the barber giving him a haircut.Katherine Renault is a successful career woman, wondering why, if she has the perfect job and the perfect fiancé, does she feel so hollow inside -- even before the illness, the disfiguring surgery.They should have nothing in common -- though he has a magical touch with animals, he considers them property, while she can't tolerate their mistreatment. She's a sophisticated city dweller who can't abide violence, and he's never traveled beyond the local town and has blood on his hands. But love is crazy, and soon they are rescuing the injured of the world just as they rescue each other. Enduring violence and loss, they live in a domestic bliss wide and deep enough to dilute most of life's dramas, until fate tests them again.Funny, erotic, emotionally powerful, yet surprisingly unsentimental about our relationships with each other and with animals in our care, Crazy Love will heal broken hearts. Chapter 1 Watch time. At 8:30 A.M. on April 19, a farmer named Joseph David Long, known locally as Bear, was on his way into town when he saw two men standing over a cow. Bear stopped his truck to the side of the county road and looked out across the pasture -- a fringe of grassland, a background of forest. Both men laughed. They were far enough away for him to see their heads go back before he heard their laughter, which came a disconnected moment later, as in a poorly dubbed movie. Bear knew that one of the men must be Phil Scrudde because Scrudde's big blue Cadillac was parked right out there in the pasture, next to the cow, which was lying down. Scrudde was famous for driving his Cadillac into pastures and fields, like maybe he thought he was Hud. From this distance, Bear couldn't recognize the other man, taller and thinner. Quickly now, Scrudde, the shorter fatter man, grabbed up a pitchfork and stuck the cow's flank. Bear's mouth dropped at the sudden cruelty of it and he once again saw movement -- the cow stretching its neck and raising its muzzle at being impaled -- before hearing the cow's sound, a sad trumpet on this empty-stage, frost-chilled April morning. Bear exited his truck and crossed the fence. More than a fence was crossed of course. To enter that pasture was one of those decisions fat with fate, leading to mayhem. But even if he'd known it at the time, Bear still would've crossed that fence: he was a dangerously uncomplicated man; on occasion he was inevitable. When they saw him coming, Bear counting steps, Scrudde handed the pitchfork to the taller man, who turned out to be Carl Coote, twenty-five years old and considered handsome by the women. Carl preferred you hold the final e silent when pronouncing his last name, but it was a campaign he had waged without success from first grade on. Carl was called Cootie. He worked for Scrudde because no one else would have him, Carl known as a thief and fistfighter. Word was he wanted to be a rock star, though how he hoped to accomplish this, here in Appalachia, was anyone's guess. "Hello there, Bear," Scrudde said with a smile like false dawn. "You're just the man we need." Sc...
