These Months Since June

This novel is historical fiction that takes place almost entirely over 5 days in 1966, as Finch Macy returns to Macy Ranch in a valley named for his family, located on the eastern edge of California’s Central Coast Range. He has spent his summer of morning down in Los Angeles with their two daughters raising their own families. Up northern, Macy Canyon was once nearly covered with Macy Ranch apple, apricot and pear orchards, though by 1966, East Orchard and mighty West Orchard only spread over perhaps a quarter of the valley, with Old Orchard adjacent to their old white Victorian ranch house, this windmill bearing orchard accounting for less than an additional hundred acres. Finch is disappointed his daughters choose to stay in Southern California after UCLA and USC, and he’s distressed over their younger brother, at Cal Poly halfway between Los Angeles and Macy Ranch, who shows no interest in orchard ranching. Back there at Macy Ranch he's found condolence cards and plastic flowers pilled up on front porch's coffee table, used exclusively for beer cans and whiskey bottle until these months since June. Finch realizes even as lonely as the ranch house was his first evening back from Los Angeles, he’d rather be left along with his ranch dog, Ebner, who's just been returned to Macy Ranch from the black lab's own summer of morning over at Finch's only good friends' brand new home, purchased with proceeds from selling their orchard ranch merely twice the size of Old Orchard. Those who've bought and developed Takahashi Ranch, changed the name to Redwood Ranch, feeling The War will never be over for most home buyers, filled with black and white images all the way to Nagasaki without a single internment camp.

As his first day in the orchards wraps up, Finch is feeling guilty the way he’d told one summer of morning girlfriend living near Riverside that his ranch was in Arizona and the other summer of morning girlfriend living in Santa Monica his ranch was in Oregon; however, he feels worst how these months Since June dragged out as if he were digging postholes east and west across Los Angeles through a ever-present purple haze, as he imagines upon parting Los Angeles, he may told his Santa Monica librarian he was headed back to his ranch in Arizona, and jukebox girl near Riverside he was heading back to his ranch in Oregon. This mix up he plans to mull over with Ebner, while pouring himself a couple of fingers of whiskey; afterwards, he’ll examine the stack of bills from University Hospital that were two bills before driving south in June and stand two dozen high upon his return from his summer of morning these month since June.