New York Blastoff: Second Novel in a Trilogy

By London Fell

This second novel of the trilogy centers around a set of turns in Mid-Western Iowa, along the Mississippi River. There, in multiple picturesque settings, enters Claudette Monet in search of inspiration for her paintings. She is already well known to readers from our first novel in the trilogy, Claudette Monet in America. In New York Blastoff she encounters some troubling circumstances that are highly dramatic. From the East Coast, she ventures across the Midwest to California for artistic inspiration. After all this, the scene shifts to NYC.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Mar 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781645365600

London Fell

London Fell is a widely published author of political and legal thought issues over a series of 12 books.  His new found literary works are now being produced over a number of individual books. He is a graduate of Princeton University and holds a doctorate degree from Columbia University.

Book preview

BEYOND

About the Author

London Fell is a widely published author of political and legal thought over a series of 12 books. His newfound literary works are now being produced over a number of individual books. He is a graduate of Princeton University and holds a doctoral degree from Columbia University. In his post-retirement years, his interests have continued to develop into authoring novels, poetry, and plays.

Dedication

To our sons,

Alexander and Jason (my literary agent).

Copyright Information ©

London Fell (2020)

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Ordering Information:

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Publisher’s Cataloguing-in-Publication data

Fell, London

New York Blastoff

Austin Macauley is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In this spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.

ISBN 9781643789170 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781643789163 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781645365600 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020900831

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published (2020)

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 28th Floor

New York, NY 10005

USA

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Acknowledgment

Alexander, Jason, and Sophia Fell.

Prefatory Note

This novel, New York Blastoff, was preceded by Claudette Monet in America: Fantasy Sketches, the first novel in this trilogy, and will be followed by a third novel.

Part One

LAUNCH PAD

Chapter One

WINDS ALONG THE MISSISSIPPI

Was it to remain, like for so many others there, a settled life-long hometown experience, complete in itself? Or an unsettled springboard for journey into the vast outside unknown, or something else? For those who left it, wouldn’t it stay with them forever?

Theirs was a picturesque background and peaceful beginning. For Oliver Topping and his twin sister, Olivia, their hometown of Burlington, Iowa acquired an almost mythical aura, a place where their dreams of a future could remain content within conditions of their present and past. While growing up in this small town of Middle America along the Mississippi River, they spent their teenage years mostly in the 1950s, lulled into acquiescence toward their lot by the quiescence of the era. The town was marked by two high bluffs or hills, north and south, on the riverfront, with commanding views up and down the river.

Nearby attractive homes and parks enriched the setting. Between the two hills lay flatter ground for the railroad station and yards, expectant of travelers between Chicago and San Francisco crossing either way across the bridge on this major East-West artery. For the twins and many of their relations, horizons remained confined mostly to their Burlington world and other nearby Iowa towns along the Mississippi.

The Mississippi River and its winds did give inspiration to Oliver and Olivia like to so many others. Coming down from the north below Canada through Minnesota and Wisconsin, or coming up from the Gulf through Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri, the river’s wintry or summery blasts of air could stimulate one’s thought and desire. Crosscurrents of East-West winds brought their own properties of life. In short, the river possessed a life, a personality, of its own for those living or visiting there. This world seemed self-contained, not quick to give up its sway through extensions to or from the outside. The half-dozen other towns up and down Iowa’s riverfront, all sharing similar historical and economic roots, lent common culture to Burlington and its neighbors. Not only all that but also the very placement of the Mississippi River, dominating the country’s center heartland, gave self-unity and self-purpose for many living their lives there in that now distant period when the country was less cross-mobile and interconnected. The winds themselves were a constant metaphor for inbred energies living unto themselves. Hard, if ever, to break away from the spell. The twins expressed their own variations on this theme. I love how our river helps give meaning to my attempts as an artist, remarked Olivia, one day to one of her high school girlfriends. Our boating and picnics there give us a common social world.

I know what you mean, replied her friend.

It may be a river instead of an ocean, but look at how big and wide and long it is. How do people on the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans live without a fresh-water social world like this? Less outgoing and extroverted than his sister, Oliver thought more in terms of space rocketry and exploration, then coming into their own in the 1950s. Those winds rushing up and down the wide Mississippi remind me of how rockets blast-off from their launching pads. Wish I could get on one and take a ride. Answered his sister, You always manage to have a good imagination, brother.

Go ahead, call me a dreamer.

Well, she added, I did learn a new word in English class recently—reverie.

Don’t tell me, I’ll look it up.

The twins’ parents, Henry and Alice Topping, had a different take on the topic. Henry owned a commercial roofing business in Burlington, which he hoped his son would take over from him someday. Son, think of all the extra money you can earn when people’s roofs have to be repaired or even replaced after stormy windy weather along the river nearby. Thank goodness, we’ve never had to go much outside our immediate hometown area for good roofing jobs to fill.

That’s right, added Alice. All our friends and relations live right around here. No need to bust ourselves traveling all over, the way some people do. No need for anyone to grow up and leave here. Picnics and parties in the fresh air. That river blows all the pollution away, a real cleaner of the environment.

Early on in their high school years, the twins bade a sad farewell to someone who had spent a number of years in Burlington as a devotee of the Mississippi river, its scenic expanses and social milieu. Her name was Claudette Monet, named after the great French Impressionist painter, Claude Monet. By the late 1950s, Claudette was in her own late 50s, much older than the twins but becoming a good friend especially of Olivia. Although by now gone, having left Burlington for the West Coast, Claudette made a lasting impression on Olivia and others of the twins’ contemporaries. Claudette occasionally wrote to Olivia, who recalled the sad day when Claudette finally waved them goodbye as she boarded the famed California Zephyr at the one and same Burlington railroad station in search of new scenes for her paintings, later ending up in San Francisco.