Novels in manuscript by Monty Joynes

EAGLE FEATHERS IN GLASS

PASS IN REVIEW

GRID

NO RETURNS

JOURNEY TO THE ONE

EAGLE FEATHERS IN GLASS

A Novel

AUTHOR: St. Leger “Monty” Joynes

GENRE: Adventure Romance

LOCALE: Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico

CIRCA: Contemporary

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PLOT LINE: A half-breed temptress, in her role as an American Indian fine arts gallery entrepreneur, employs guile and ceremonial magic in an attempt to exploit three generations of Indian artists. Dishonest as a mistress and friend, sexuality is only one of the charlatan methods employed to separate American Indians from the spiritual connection to their art. The struggle is both historic in detail and dramatic in form.

THE PITCH: Santa Fe is one of the most important art markets in the world. Here is seen the behind-the-gallery undercurrent of intrigues and deceptions that exploit its hallmark products—American Indian fine arts. The primary characters are contemporary American Indian artists, a subculture unexplored in commercial film but unique, vibrant, and even explosive in emotional intensity. Three of the major characters are based on the lives of legendary Indian artists. Lloyd Kiva New, founder of the Institute of American Indian Arts, is not only one of the subjects, but he also mentored the author in the writing and read the manuscript just prior to his death. The role of Donna provides a tour de force for a bi-racial actress.

SETTING: The high-end gallery environs of Santa Fe, artists’ studios and hangouts, and the natural beauty of the Pueblo Indian homelands with its Anasazi antiquities.

STORY SYNOPSIS

The artists—an apprentice Pueblo Indian glassblower, a Cherokee elder and important art educator, a mature woman painter whose famous mother was a breakthrough Indian artist of the 1930s, and a young Lakota painter-poet just approaching fame—come under the influence of a self-styled mystic art dealer who would manipulate and corrupt them all in her lust for control and wealth.

Donna Sebastian, whose gypsy charlatan grandmother was a founder of Santa Fe, oversees an elegant Indian fine arts gallery as a half-breed temptress whose lust for Native American ceremonial antiquities provides the jewelry for her corrupting private ceremonies. But although Donna believes in magic, her manipulation of the art careers of her clients is pure Anglo-centric materialism.

Donna, once the proud model and mistress of famous European artists, now depends on the largesse of a wealthy Dallas paramour, a hotel developer who uses his mistress and the gallery that he silently owns to produce both exotic pleasures and illegal profits.

Donna courts Lloyd, the aging honored grandfather of contemporary Indian arts, for the credibility he can lend to her gallery, and she entices his wife Leah in order to ultimately manage the estate of his valuable art collection. From Luis, she takes stolen Pueblo antiquities in exchange for an instant and false success that his student art glass does not merit. Dori, dying of breast cancer, is the target of Donna’s attention because the dealer is cornering the market on her early works in anticipation of her death. Support for Dottie (Dori’s ethnically confused artist daughter) and Richard (Dori’s self-sacrificing Anglo husband) is designed to get control of Dori’s estate and the wealth of her studio art inventory. In addition, Donna is embezzling from the gallery to support her jewelry lust.

To capture Nakai and put him under an exclusive dealer’s contract, Donna uses Claire, her gallery manager and protégé, to sexually snare the emerging art star. Then to make Nakai mass produce his paintings, Donna performs a mystical empowering ceremony in a secret artificial cave in her home basement

What Donna is doing to Luis, Lloyd, Dori, and Nakai illustrates the historic exploitation of the American Indian artist and the denial of the metaphysical connection of a people to its art. In this story the historic struggle and the spiritual connections are both made self-evident. The film itself is thus a mosaic that documents the attitudes and feelings of contemporary American Indian artists. The character development is not without humor, emotion, and suspense.

In its climax, Donna’s carefully plotted schemes backfire, and she loses control over the artists. Then her Dallas paramour discovers embezzlement and replaces Donna with her turncoat protégé and his new mistress Claire. In Donna’s unexpected and sudden exodus, she is denied access to her treasure cave of stolen Indian antiquities. In the last scene, she pitifully attempts to seduce the security officer who is driving her to exile in Canada.

Length: 103,723 words

PASS IN REVIEW

A Novel

AUTHOR: St. Leger “Monty” Joynes

GENRE: Military-War Drama

LOCALE: Twilight Zone

CIRCA: The Indefinite Future

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PLOT LINE: Six combat infantrymen from six different United States wars are transported from the height of a specific historic battle to a twilight zone where they must encounter each other, organize, and attempt to figure out where they are and why they have been brought so mysteriously to a place without the possibility of escape.

THE PITCH: Based on extensive research, and a deep understanding and compassion for the American fighting man, PASS IN REVIEW reaches out in character to every American who needs to respond to the questions that each soldier must ask of himself. Here laid bare are the American lessons of war in the vernacular of the men who lived them from Yorktown to Khe Sanh. And here in one place, the experience of the U. S. at war is formed up to pass in review.

PASS IN REVIEW is a novel of suspense, mystery, humor, and compelling dialog. It surprises at every turn as each character must learn the fate of his war from a future-war comrade. It is history seen through a uniquely present perspective—six soldiers around a campfire joined by a seventh, the reader, as observer and emotional participant.

SETTING: An oval valley of rocky sides and steep wooded hills that end in a wall of impenetrable, frightening fog: an inescapable, mysterious twilight zone.

STORY SYNOPSIS

In a few moments six young men will be transported from military combat in six separate battles ranging nearly 200 years in United States history to a twilight zone.

Robert Maynard, a sapper in the 8^th Connecticut Regiment of Continentals, will come from Redoubt Number Ten at Yorktown, Virginia, on October 14, 1781. He is a member of a revolutionary army.

Sergeant Odell Davis, a moment before, was at General Armistead’s side as the remnants of Pickett’s Division went over the wall of the Union lines at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The day for him is July 4, 1863.

Jimmy Fitzmorris, a member of New York’s Own 77^th Division, will come from the Argonne Forest in France on October 6, 1918. His First Battalion is considered lost and under desperate attack.

For Fred Marshall, a buck sergeant in the 506^th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101^st Airborne Division, the date is January 3, 1945. He is coming from a town in Belgium called Bastogne. His unit is among American soldiers surrounded by at least three enemy divisions.

Lewis Smith is a Marine in the 1^st Marine Division. He is trying to survive the first week of December 1950, in Korea in a retreat from a place called the Chosin Reservoir. If he does not keep moving, his boots will freeze to the ground.

Another Marine, Ray Johnson, will also come from a part of the world unknown to most Americans before its war. It is February 2, 1968, and Marines are dying every day to defend a combat base called Khe Sanh under siege in a country called Vietnam.

In the next hours, and days, the six strangers must sort out individually and collectively the meaning of their coming together. They must decide if they have been placed in heaven or hell. They must support and learn from each other even when the lessons are as bitter as the mind can stand. They must find their place in a never-ending war and seek individual peace in the twilight zone.

Length: 88,992 words

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G R I D

A Novel

AUTHOR: St. Leger “Monty” Joynes

GENRE: Adventure Romance

LOCALE: New Orleans

CIRCA: 2019

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PLOT LINE: A spirited street musician dares to compete on the New Orleans Grid in a life-and-death gamble to finance his settlement of revolutionary refugees. The hero’s access to the high-stakes game is dependent on appealing to the tempestuous Grid promotions director, an enigmatic famous beauty that war and the corrupt Open City have jaded against trust and love. Despite the violent dangers of the Grid game and their initial mistrust of each other, the couple triumphs over the adversities of a demoralized future USA.

THE PITCH: GRID is a romance of rich dialog and memorable characters who function within a milieu of danger and excitement. GRID is also a dynamic social document of where our country has been and where it may go. Both elements blend for an experience of both intellect and emotion that includes humor. The futuristic projections of what American society may become are both innovative and destined to be controversial. The acrobatic and devious combats on the Grid performed by a cast of international rogues is inventive in a way never before seen in film. The role of Desireé Bazile offers a tour de force to film’s top actresses.

SETTING: New Orleans, an Open City of gambling and sensual excess in the year 2019 with the Superdome Grid as its major attraction.

STORY SYNOPSIS

The scene is New Orleans, one of 16 Open Cities in the year 2019. The United States, victim of economic depression, The Great California Earthquake, food riots, and anarchy has a new constitution administered by 30 SIG’s (Special Interest Groups) who have divided the production centers of the country. Most of the historic and cultural background of this period is reported in a series of chapters from The Soviet Travelers’ Guide to the United States.

Desireé Bazile is the tempestuous Publicity and Promotions Director of the New Orleans Grid, a pari-mutuel game played on a 15-story tower inside the refurbished Louisiana Superdome. Amateur and professional games are played in which participants climb the tower to retrieve a leather purse worth as much as half a million barter dollars. The combat for the prize is vicious.

Desireé is an enigmatic beauty whose fashion extravagances make her one of the most recognized figures in a city of legendary excess. Her life is altered when The Pro, a Grid handicapper and dean of New Orleans gamblers, asks her to meet The Pirate, a seasonal street performer in the French Quarter who wants to be a Grid player. Scott Hartley, musician, horse breeder, and homesteader in a Zone of Disinterest, needs the Grid purse to finance his growing community. Although Scott and Desireé are both children of the revolution and approaching age 40 with unsatisfied needs for relationship, their initial attraction turns to deadly conflict. Only The Pro, understanding their mutual qualities, can bring them together. The pride of one and the passion of the other are exchanged as they involuntarily reverse roles for the dramatic climax on the Grid tower.

The action of the film is played out against the color and traditions of New Orleans and the unique characters who inhabit the world of the Grid. Club scenes at Tipitina’s revive the great traditions of New Orleans jazz, pop, and hot dance music.

The larger fate of the United States and its institutions, however, impinge on the struggle of the characters. For here in the new century, the United States has found a way to solve its social and economic problems although it is no longer a major player on the world stage, and democracy exists only in the Zones of Disinterest.

Length: 89,100 words

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NO RETURNS

A Novel

AUTHOR: St. Leger “Monty” Joynes

GENRE: Political Drama

LOCALE: North Carolina Mountains/Washington, DC

CIRCA: 2006

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PLOT LINE: An 87-year-old man writes a Letter-to-the-Editor that propels him to prominence as the ideological founder of NO RETURNS, a revolutionary citizens movement to deny re-election to all state and Federal office holders. From the publication of the letter to the mid-term national elections of 2006, a period of 18 months, the man is in danger of being silenced by the plots of a U. S. Senator and even by his own daughter. In the life of the man is reflected the dramatic essence of the American experience, from the frontier era to the space age. And from this life comes the quintessential American revolutionary.

THE PITCH: Every complaint that contemporary Americans address against their government is articulated by the central character; but moreover, he offers the method for near immediate change—a revolutionary, but Constitutional change based on a true participatory democracy. He must defend his call for radical change against challenges from members of Congress and all other office holders who label him an anarchist. That he does so in concept and in clear language will provide a manifesto for all Americans who are frustrated by special-interest governance. The book will be quoted like a bible wherever politics and social change are discussed.

SETTING: The remote mountains of North Carolina circa 1917-1939. The war in the Atlantic circa 1940-45. Greensboro, NC circa 1946-1996. Boone, NC and K Street, Washington, DC circa 2004-2006.

STORY SYNOPSIS

A widower of eight years, Ogden Meredith, retired small-businessman and veteran of WWII combat, returns to his ancestral North Carolina mountain home to contemplate his journey through life. The quiet process leads him to conclusions about the evolution of American society and the failure of governance to address the real problems of the country. His short letter to the Charlotte Observer advocating NO RETURNS as a solution to special-interest government, and his subsequent appearances on talk-radio shows, starts a national movement that identifies him as its ideological founder.

Soon a national headquarters is established in Washington, and hundreds of local and state chapters are licensed by association management entrepreneur Laura Handy, a former mistress to Congressmen on whom she seeks revenge. Washington Post Pulitzer journalist Nan Berger goes to North Carolina to expose the NO RETURNS idealist but discovers that he is a sincere savant who seeks no personal profit or power. She assigns herself the role of his biographer.

As the 2006 mid-term Congressional elections approach—and polls indicate that NO RETURNS is a serious threat to the status quo—North Carolina senior Senator Arthur Brock seeks to silence Meredith by employing Meredith’s daughter Vivian, and her politically ambitious husband Duncan, to hospitalize her aged father. Meredith is saved by his timely movement to the NO RETURNS headquarters in DC, but Laura Handy is interested only in exploiting Meredith, and she sends him on a six-week national speaking tour leading up to Election Day to keep him away from his daughter and maximize media exposure.

Dave Kushner, a young black civil rights activist turned Meredith advocate and aide, and Nan Berger try to protect Meredith from kidnap by his daughter and exploitation by Handy. En route to Election Day, individuals mistaken for Meredith and Kushner are murdered.

The NO RETURNS revolution is a historic success, but the campaign has cost Ogden Meredith his life. He does not die, however, until his repentant daughter is restored to him and forgiven. A defeated and drunken Arthur Brock then forces his way into the NO RETURNS headquarters, castigates Meredith, and, unaware that his nemesis has just died, shoots him three times.

The narration of the novel is from the point of view of a sympathetic biographer. The scope of the novel documents the dramatic social, cultural, and political characteristics of 20^th century America as Ogden Meredith viewed them. Millions of readers will identify with him.

Length: 105,648 words (452 ms. pages)

JOURNEY TO THE ONE

Newest Book Project

THE BIOGRAPHY OF
JEANNE WHITE EAGLE
AND JOHN PEHRSON

In 1996 Jeanne White Eagle Pehrson was given a vision in which she was asked to go worldwide doing sacred sound ceremonies that would move the world toward a lasting peace. With husband John, the couple’s personal mission evolved into the “For The One” Dance where people from often conflicting cultures come together to practice an ancient vision quest ceremony by dancing and singing spontaneous songs during a three-day fast.

The “For The One” Dance has now spread across five continents by word of mouth, and Jeanne and John travel continuously to lead life-changing dances in Israel, Germany, South Africa, Brazil, and beyond. Today, there are more requests for the dance than they can personally honor, so a large international team of volunteer drummers, fire keepers, Moon Mothers, Sun Fathers, Dog Soldiers, and even kitchen managers are training others to expand the impact of the linked events.

Monty met Jeanne and John in December 2000 at one of their Peace Concerts; and after following the course of their vision for several years, he urged them to document their life and travel experiences in a book. When their travel schedules seemed to make the book an impossibility, Monty, seeing their need for recognition and support, offered to write their biography. The project began in March 2005, and Monty has served as a Dog Soldier at two “For The One” Dances in the USA. His research for the biography includes about 800,000 words of journals kept by John and Jeanne since 1993 and over sixty extensive interviews conducted worldwide. Monty says that this long two-subject biography is the hardest work he has ever loved. By the end of 2005, Monty had written 70,000 words of manuscript, but additional coverage, interviews, and editing are expected to take him well into 2006 as he works this book between movie projects.

A summary of JOURNEY TO THE ONE: THE BIOGRAPHY OF JEANNE WHITE EAGLE AND JOHN PEHRSON and sample chapters are now available for consideration by publishers. Monty hopes for publication as soon as Fall 2006 if he can complete the manuscript by June and have a contract in place. Because the biographical narrative features chapters set in 21 different countries, Monty expects foreign rights interest in this book to be high.

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