Return to Juniper

Kenny Young has been retired as an aerospace scientist for ten years. Since then he has been haunted by mysterious dreams that resemble scenes from a spacecraft, with characters some of whom Kenny has realized are aliens. Kenny suspects the aliens in his dreams are connected to the flying saucer he witnessed as a boy, in 1956, and a young man in 1963, when slight, big-headed, cloudy-personas stared back at him beneath their hovering, saucer-like spacecraft. Kenny believes the mysterious images in his dreams stem from these two events that occurred decades ago. He and his wife Linda travel cross country to the high desert of the northern Great Basin to find out. In Juniper, long-time citizen Virl Saeger experiences the same thing as Young, although his nightmares began years ago, in the early 1960s. Saeger suspects his dreams are connected to the same 1956 alien spacecraft landing witnessed by both him and Young. His quest to interpret his mysterious dreams parallels that of Kenny Young, only decades apart. The two men’s quests take the reader between the 1960s of Virl’s time, to Kenny Young’s present day Juniper. The dual-era aspect underlines the significant differences between the conditions and citizens of small town America in the 1950s and ‘60s versus life in the same small town today. Significant in the story is a small group of Juniper residents with peculiar mental and physical traits that make them unique. Called ‘Amerans,’ these people settled near Juniper in the 1870s, led by the Jame family, still ranching and raising cattle there all these years, and the Sol family. Kenny Young’s boyhood schoolmate, Dred Sol, now working for an international consulting service, meets Kenny Young in 2016 Juniper to help him solve the mysteries of his past and his dreams. As Young and Saeger struggle to interpret their dreams, the story introduces several other key characters from both 2016 and 1963, whose trials and achievements bring the town of Juniper to life: Dred Sol, the Ameran operator whose long career in espionage and subterfuge qualifies him to provide unique help to Young’s quandary; Mike Berg, owner and publisher of the Juniper Banner and his daughter Amanda, who battle to preserve the integrity of the news and freedom of speech in a changing journalistic universe; teacher Nicole Hanks and administrator Jennifer Murchison, gay lovers whose modern political and social views engage Berg and his paper in ideological battle; Shawn Starr, Hanks’ half-brother she hires to find dirt on Berg; Justin Miller, local drug dealer and low-life who makes his living infecting high school kids and millennials with methamphetamine; Tyler Kelley, twenty-two year old would-be law student and half-brother of prominent local attorney Jason Kelley, who hires him for summer help at his law firm; twelve-year-old Aidan Volpe, a product of present-day ‘self-esteem’ educational systems; and the Jame family, Ameran ranchers who assist Young and Saeger from behind the scenes to uncover the mysteries of their past.