Years of serving overseas as a mercenary and intelligence operative have molded Brian Dunston into a man of impressive grit, skill at using violence, and presence of mind under pressure. Ironically, these very characteristics, so vital in lethal war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, become a hindrance in the corporate world of contemporary America, where flattery, evasion, and double-dealing are rewarded and integrity, honesty, and strength of character are regarded with suspicion and sometimes even punished. Brian is quickly seen as a liability by his corporate peers, and when he stands up to management for wrongs done to the company's overseas personnel, he is sent packing, his reputation reduced to tatters. Moving his family to a remote area on California's northern coast, Brian seeks, with grim stoical determination, to support his family doing menial jobs for a mere pittance. As a man lacking in any kind of self-sustaining belief in a religious faith or transcendent purpose or meaning to life, Brian must instead rely on his own inner resources to power through the challenges which confront him. As he finds himself increasingly caught up in the tragedies and malevolence of existence, he reaches a point of crisis which calls into question some of his deepest convictions.
Reality's Maw
is the first volume in a projected four-part series which will seek to revive the novel of ideas by dramatizing some of the most critical social, political, philosophical and even theological challenges facing civilization in the twenty-first century. "The genesis of this novel," notes its author, Greg Nyquist, "was the idea of a person so strong and capable that he could make his way through the world without a sustaining faith in God or moral transcendence. How would that actually work out in real life? Thus was suggested a theme that could be worked out over the course of a long narrative consisting of series of novels containing other important matters, such as issues relating to societal decadence, civilization and its discontents, and the limitations of an ideological interpretation of existence."