It Always Rains on Wednesday: Book One: Genesis

A strange unchartered world awaits Monte Scott, a young and inexperienced vocational rehabilitation counselor assigned to work at a residential school for the blind. From the first moments, his life is challenged and changed by confrontation with students, teachers and events in ways previously unimaginable. Presumptions of "sightless, pitiable, invalid children" awaken to questions of misconception and prejudice.

Will he survive or be summarily cast out as three others from his agency have been? And with a dark, secretive past weighing on his shoulders and haunting every step, does he really care?

At times profound, often humorous and enlightening, It Always Rains on Wednesday is a story of relationships, set in the pre-computer age of 1969. A collective portrait of characters reveal elements of the human spirit with uncompromising reality.

R. Douglas Hackney is a native Virginian. Born in the Tidewater area, he then lived in Richmond, earning degrees from the University of Richmond and Virginia Commonwealth University in addition to three years' study at Union Presbyterian Seminary. As a vocational rehabilitation counselor he relocated to Charlottesville and then to the Shenandoah Valley, obtaining a master of divinity degree at Eastern Mennonite Seminary in Harrisonburg. Though this is his first full-length novel, he has written a humorous monthly column in an agency newsletter, short stories and poems in school publications, an album of original songs, and, most recently, a musical in final stages of production. His work experience ranges from grocery clerk to carpentry, grape vineyard management to ministry, truck driver to advertising. Married with five children, much of his time is spent cutting firewood for their valley home, playing and singing folk music, hiking, camping, canoeing and other outdoor activities. A restored 1933 Dodge is sometimes driven on tours and in parades. Please visit https: //doughackney.com for more information.