Yesterday we had a picnic over at Jopie’s apartment complex by the intracoastal. Kiernan played in the water for hours, barely stopping to have a drink and a bite. Not sure she ever even ate dinner..couple of kids there to play with, so she was in heaven.

Speaking of heaven, Martha Backer nee Kaplan and I have been talking about the books over Facebook Messenger…she is a most insightful gal..I wish I’d known her better in high school. She made the point that she figured people would kill their children in order to be free of them to continue their dysfunctional lifestyle with opioids and such. Instead, I’ve depicted infanticide as an act of love, induced by a cult leader’s, for lack of a better word, brainwashing. But the idea of a person like my main character in book 1 meeting an unholy death trying to warn people about the evils of cult leaders was a raw deal. I agreed with her.

We talk about how the system is rigged against people who are referred to as the ‘lower classes’, but frankly, that could be any of us; there but for fortune, which in time may run out. The leader of the cult, aided and abetted by evangelical preachers, often with mendacious motive, convinced frightened people to do the unthinkable.

Rather that the Sunday school version of the quote from Matthew 19, where Jesus likes to pat kids on the head, next to the lambs and baby goats, the evangelical slant is quite different. The notion is that only innocent children can enter heaven, because adults are too corrupted unless they sell everything and follow him. But time has run out to do that. So to spare their children from being corrupted – and killed as a result of climate change – their parents give them a sleeping death with opioids and

antifreeze. Tell me that could never happen here? Time will tell.