Synopsis
Here's a model family man, tremendously successful in his public life as the powerful czar of the nation's proposed 21st century transcontinental bullet train, The Windjammer. Worthington Rhodes is highly respected, even by the President of the United States. He has everything going for him: support from Congress, the construction industry, suppliers, labor unions, and according to the latest D'Camp-CNN opinion poll, the general public.
We first see him in the Dulles Airport where he is to meet his estranged father, "Dusty", an eminent archaeologist who is arriving from Athens to join with the renowned Dr. Anna Ardmore on her forthcoming Southwest excavation in the Four Corners. Worthington has taken his little daughter Emily with him, hoping to avoid an unpleasant confrontation with his father in which he might lose his temper as he had in an adolescent fracas twenty years earlier.
Preservationist Anna Ardmore, beautiful, vivacious, obsessed with the prehistory Anasazi people of the Four Corners, is determined to save their many archaeological sites that are destined to be bulldozed for the wide right-of-way for Worthington's train. She can't fathom how this attractive man can be so insensitive to America's heritage.
In a premeditated scheme Anna seduces Dusty in an effort to get the dirt (so to speak) on Worthington so that she can pressure him into abandoning his project. Dusty, wanting to get even with his son for not becoming an archaeologist and carrying on a three-generation family tradition, tells Anna an unbelievable story that Worthington was responsible for his uncle's death. When she challenges the validity of that yarn, he tells her to talk to Aunt Hattie up there in Maine.
Meanwhile, Anna's fanatical cohort, Quentin Ford IV, chairman of the influential non-profit Institute and Living Museum of Archaeology (ILMA), has his own scheme for doing away with Worthington. After a fund-raising reception for Anna in Washington, D. C., Quentin tells her his plan is the only way to derail the economic development interests supporting the bullet train. Anna, believing Quentin means to assassinate Worthington, pleads for 48 hours to do it her way.
In the never-never world of the coast of Maine, Anna and Worthington meet unexpectedly. Anna has arrived to interrogate Aunt Hattie, but it's Aunt Hattie's funeral that has summoned Worthington. That evening, in an old sea captain's bed and breakfast, Worthington and Anna put aside their public facades for a private night of passion.
An unfaithful Worthington returns to the nation's capital and wife Sara's domestic scene. With Anna dominating his thoughts, he buries himself with work as he prepares for his cross-country promotional tour for The Windjammer.
A self-delusive Anna escapes back to her familiar Four Corners and tries to put Worthington out of her mind, concentrating instead on her immediate task of getting ready for the arrival of the seminarists who will help excavate her Noah's Ark site. Alexander Parish, former baseball star, leads the roster which includes a Houston oil man and his wife, a Wall Street economist, a school teacher, a female banker, Dusty, and Daisy, the woman in short shorts. Isolated from the outside world, they bond together, supporting Anna to the extreme as she forsakes the truth and fabricates an Anasazi discovery in order to focus the whole world's attention on preserving her archaeological wonders.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
A native of Wisconsin, Ruth Clapsaddle-Counts (Chippewa) earned a Bachelor of Arts with a major in journalism from Stanford University after graduating from Shortridge High School in Indianapolis. She later studied in the American Heritage program at the University of Georgia. Ruth has served on the Chairman's Council of Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Cortez, Colorado. She has bonded with the people of the various Pueblo Nations, and likes to share with them her fruitful research of Celtic culture. Ruth lives in Santa Fe where she enjoys the camaraderie of friends of archaeology, history buffs of the Santa Fe Trail, and all the explorers, hikers and runners who love the magnificent Southwest.
From the Back Cover
A futuristic American bullet train. Fast. Clean. Safe. Comfortable. The perfect way to travel between New York and Los Angeles. That's how Worthington Rhodes sees it. His Windjammer project, backed by newspaper and media magnate Henry D'Camp, is steadily garnering political support and seems destined to revolutionize transcontinental travel.
An earthen mound and a few shards of pottery in the Southwestern high desert. Remnants of a civilization lost in the past. Renowned archaeologist Anna Ardmore lovingly sifts through layer after layer of dirt and time searching for clues to a world so unlike her own, the world of the Anasazi. They are a people who call to her spirit, and their prehistory pueblos may be destroyed forever if the Windjammer project comes to fruition.
Desperate for a way to save her work and the ancient world that has claimed her soul, Anna Ardmore finds powerful allies in her spirit-quest. A wealthy and brutal Washington, D.C. socialite, a Native American Congressional aide, an even Worthington Rhodes' father are drawn into the fight to save the past. But it is a fight that may destroy the man Anna Ardmore loves.
A taught drama pulsing with political and psychological intrigue, Ruth Clapsaddle-Counts' first novel, Four Corners, encompasses the entire country, the ancient past, and the not-to-distant future without losing its focus on the human choice of whether to follow your heart or fight for a dream.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
From Chapter 25:
"In the beginning, the ancestors of the Anasazi traveled upward, rising out of their underworld estate through the hole in the earth their modern-day descendants call the sipapu, to this world we now see reflected in our beautiful sunset. Here, a great chief told them that someday a fleet-footed animal with a flowing main would arrive to carry them to their glorious future. But his people were afraid that the spirit of the chief's visionary animal might not respect their ancestors, so a shaman among them dusted the chief with slumber powder, and the chief lay down--as you see him there...and fell sound asleep..." Anna pointed toward the mountain. "...stretched out across the southeastern corner of Utah. Someday, so the legend goes, the spermatozoa from the Sleeping Ute will propagate a brave new chief who will lead his people to rise up and reclaim these lands that, since the beginning of time, have rightfully been theirs."
From Chapter 8:
"These days there's only so much I can do to manage broadcast and print, even in my own outlets. I can no longer control my own journalists. There are too many public relations firms plying reporters with their hype, too many hidden agendas, too many people with axes to grind who want to place stories, fan distortions, influence the media and the public. News has taken second page to exposs. The good old days of simple, straightforward news gathering are gone--those days before stories labeled 'gate this' and 'gate that'."
"Gate?"
D'Camp nodded. "Yes, there are too many reporters running around looking for their one big story. If I fired them all there'd be a new batch apply from this year's pool of journalism graduates, and I'd be faced with the same problem of eager young members of the fourth estate searching for that newspaper headline. There are too many prizes for investigative journalism these days. Why, every communication school in the country offers at least one.
"Everyone who fancies himself a reporter is out there snooping, especially in Washington, asking questions about everything. Any subject may be a story and every person of prominence a target, for maybe it's going to be the one little revelation that unravels the plot that wins the Pulitzer. And if that happens, they've made their career mark, their book will be published, and Robert Redford will play them in a movie about their earth-shaking journalistic coup."
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Search results for Four Corners
Stock Image
Four Corners Clapsaddle-Counts, Ruth and Foyt, Luis
Seller: Turtlerun Mercantile, Albuquerque, NM, U.S.A.
Seller rating 1 out of 5 stars
hardcover. Condition: As New. Rubbing and sun fading of the dust jacket. The text is in mint condition, clean, tight and unmarked with a crisp, clean cover. Seller Inventory # P5-4TME-2XRP
Stock Image
Four Corners
Seller: Basement Seller 101, Cincinnati, OH, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Hardcover. Condition: New. Price on inside cover. Seller Inventory # 0805280097
Stock Image
Four Corners
Seller: SHIMEDIA, Brooklyn, NY, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Condition: New. Satisfaction Guaranteed or your money back. Seller Inventory # 1571970797