Beyond the Point

A terrific pounding on his farmhouse door shakes an old man, widowed and alone, from a fitful slumber. From out of the swirling snowflakes of the worst storm in decades comes a menace that the aged farmer is ill prepared to deal with. "The Sea Shell Frame." Lyle Wingate III sets off in his 1974, MGB for a cross- country trip to California. Passing through the white-hot heat of a drought filled Kansas summer the old car gives out stranding the young traveler in a treeless expanse that offers little hope of rescue. In a desolate old house, Wingate encounters a being not of this world whose designs on his body go beyond anything his mind can imagine. "All the Pleasures of Kansas." Asa Breen hacks out a farmstead on the trackless Northern Illinois prairie only to be caught up in an Indian invasion led by Chief Black Hawk in the spring of 1832. A chance meeting with a Potawatomi maiden saves his life and commences a post war saga in "Stillman's Run." Boys struggle to reach manhood and deal with the pitfalls of decision-making and romance in the stories entitled, "A Catfish is a Plain Damned Wonderment, The Rookie, and The Senior." Ed LeCrone produces a collection of eleven short stories that are filled with twists, intrigue and unexpected endings in his second book; "Beyond the Point." LeCrone's writing style harkens to earlier American authors namely: William Faulkner, Edgar Allen Poe, Mickey Spillane, and the lesser-known Ambrose Bierce. LeCrone attacks the pages of each story with memorable characters and full, meaty descriptions of the environment in which they exist.