Chasm Between Father and Son at Center of Compelling Story of Love, Loss and Forgiveness
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Bill Smith’s father is an enigma. Could his praying and preaching the wholesomeness of Christianity be a cover for something unspeakably dark in his past? Each man’s lifelong struggle to retain his own integrity while learning to respect the other forms the foundation of The Home Stretch, a compelling exploration of a difficult father-son relationship and the complexity of bridging seemingly unbridgeable differences.
Award-winning author Wayne M. Johnston’s thoroughly absorbing, reality-based story is presented through the voice of everyman Bill Smith (loosely based on Johnston himself) who, throughout his life, is confronted with extraordinary circumstances. Raised in a religious cult, Bill’s unconventional upbringing and strained relationship with his father inform his life experiences and underwrite his formidable urge, from a young age, to simply escape this life altogether.
Bill struggles with depression and suicidal thoughts, and embarks upon a career navigating the rough waters of the Pacific on a tugboat. His tales of weathering gale-force winds and violent storms at sea provide metaphorical undercurrents for Bill’s fraught relationship with his father, his failed early marriage, his father’s descent into Alzheimer’s and his own battle with leukemia, which he is told will kill him.
Just when Bill has come to believe he has put the worst of it to rest, he learns something more about his father that opens everything up again, except this time, Bill’s sister is the victim.
Ultimately, The Home Stretch is a powerful coming-of-age story for grownups that poignantly captures the unresolved emotions that surface when our past and present selves collide. Johnston gives readers candid glimpses into life-defining moments of reckoning that many of us will have to face head-on, such as retiring from a career that defines us, becoming a caregiver to a parent and contemplating our own mortality. The Home Stretch serves as a stark reminder that the peace we hope for as we age is often shoved aside to make room for another crisis, but it is also an inspiring tale woven with themes of forgiveness and survival.
Wayne M. Johnston taught English, Creative Writing and Publications at La Conner High School for 19 years. Prior to that, he worked on tugboats for 22 years, usually as chief engineer, towing freight barges between Canadian and West Coast American ports. In 2011, he won the Soundings Review First Publication Award for his essay, “Sailing,” and has published other essays locally. For his debut novel, North Fork, he drew from years of experience reading student journals to reproduce the way kids voice serious matters to a trusted adult. North Fork was released in 2016 as a YA novel. The story is told through the voices of three 17-year-olds as journal entries for their English class. Bill Smith, the protagonist in The Home Stretch, is their English teacher, and The Home Stretch (book two in a planned trilogy) is his back story.
Johnston lives with his wife, Sally, on Fidalgo Island in Washington State where he is working on another book.
The Home Stretch Publisher: Black Heron Press ISBN-10: 1936364344 ISBN-13: 978-1936364343 Available from Amazon.com, BN.com, Target.com and anywhere books are sold
Trish Stevens Stephanie Williams Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
The Home Stretch Poignantly Captures Midlife Moments of Reckoning
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While no two journeys are ever exactly the same, many of us will one day retire from a career that defines us, become a caregiver to a parent and contemplate our own mortality. How we navigate these changes depends largely on our ability to make sense of life’s complicated path and to find forgiveness for others while we still have the chance.
From award-winning author Wayne M. Johnston comes The Home Stretch, a powerful coming-of-age story for grownups that poignantly captures the complex crises that often accompany middle age and the unresolved emotions that surface when our past and present selves collide.
The Home Stretch is presented through the voice of everyman Bill Smith (loosely based on Johnston himself) who, throughout his life, is confronted with extraordinary circumstances. Raised in a religious cult, Bill’s unconventional upbringing and strained relationship with his father inform his life experiences and underwrite his formidable urge, from a young age, to simply escape this life altogether.
Bill struggles with depression and suicidal thoughts, and embarks upon a career navigating the rough waters of the Pacific on a tugboat. His tales of weathering gale-force winds and violent storms at sea provide metaphorical undercurrents for Bill’s fraught relationship with his father, his failed early marriage, his father’s descent into Alzheimer’s and his own battle with leukemia, which he is told will kill him.
Just when Bill has come to believe he has put the worst of it to rest, he learns something more about his father that opens everything up again, except this time, Bill’s sister is the victim.
Johnston’s thoroughly absorbing, reality-based story offers candid glimpses into life-defining moments of reckoning that many of us will have to face head-on. The Home Stretch serves as a stark reminder that the peace we hope for as we age is often shoved aside to make room for another crisis, but it is also an ultimately inspiring tale woven with themes of forgiveness and survival.
Wayne M. Johnston taught English, Creative Writing and Publications at La Conner High School for 19 years. Prior to that, he worked on tugboats for 22 years, usually as chief engineer, towing freight barges between Canadian and West Coast American ports. In 2011, he won the Soundings Review First Publication Award for his essay, “Sailing,” and has published other essays locally. For his debut novel, North Fork, he drew from years of experience reading student journals to reproduce the way kids voice serious matters to a trusted adult. North Fork was released in 2016 as a YA novel. The story is told through the voices of three 17-year-olds as journal entries for their English class. Bill Smith, the protagonist in The Home Stretch, is their English teacher, and The Home Stretch (book two in a planned trilogy) is his back story.
Johnston lives with his wife, Sally, on Fidalgo Island in Washington State where he is working on another book.
The Home Stretch Publisher: Black Heron Press ISBN-10: 1936364344 ISBN-13: 978-1936364343 Available from Amazon.com, BN.com, Target.com and anywhere books are sold
Trish Stevens Patricia Marks Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
Break the Fear Cycle: Brain Expert Shares Advice for Building Resilience During Challenging Times
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Forced social isolation, shuttered businesses and canceled or scaled-down worship services have contributed to an overwhelming sense of loss and fear among people all over the world. And there’s a scientific reason for these emotions, explains Timothy R. Jennings, M.D., board-certified psychiatrist, master psychopharmacologist and founder of Come and Reason Ministries.
Dr. Jennings is a much sought-after speaker who regularly addresses non-medical professionals on the subjects of Spirituality in Medicine, Depression and its Spiritual and Physical Connections, and Alzheimer’s Dementia. He also speaks to medical professionals on the topics of Psychotherapy in Clinical Practice, Major Depression in the Primary Care Setting, and the Neurobiology of Depression — among many others.
He describes how the measures taken to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 can have physiological and psychological impacts that, like dominoes, will topple our sources of strength and resilience.
“Research shows that social rejection, isolation and loneliness activate the brain’s stress pathways, thereby increasing inflammatory factors, diminishing immune response and increasing vulnerability to viral infections and cancer, and make you less resilient in life,” he says.
In the shadow of government mandates that restrict our interactions with others, what can we do within our four walls to build our resilience and guard our overall wellbeing?
Dr. Jennings suggests we can boost our resilience through physical exercise, eating a healthy diet, getting regular sleep, cognitive training, having a healthy relationship with God and spiritual development — measures that can actually alter the way our brains react to stress.
“Healthy spirituality confers resilience in a multitude of ways,” he says. “It develops your higher cortex, which calms your fear circuits. You have less fear and you’re less anxious if you’ve got a developed prefrontal cortex. And if you have a loving relationship with a God you trust, that’s part of your prefrontal cortex. And if people have more love, they have less fear.”
Another part of our prefrontal cortex is altruism — something those with healthy spirituality are more likely to engage in — and helping others also calms fear circuits.
Our ability to face a crisis and bounce back is, in part, inherited from our parents and even grandparents through our genetic makeup, Dr. Jennings explains. But through a combination of mental, physical and spiritual adaptive measures, we can boost our resilience and improve our ability to overcome life’s challenges.
Dr. Timothy R. Jennings operates a private practice in Chattanooga and has successfully treated thousands of patients. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and Life-Fellow of the Southern Psychiatric Association.
He is also a prolific author whose books include The God-Shaped Brain: How Changing Your View of God Transforms Your Life; Could It Be This Simple? A Biblical Model for Healing the Mind; The Aging Brain: Proven Steps to Prevent Dementia and Sharpen Your Mind; and The God-Shaped Heart: How Correctly Understanding God’s Love Transforms Us.
To hear his presentations and to learn more about Dr. Jennings and his approach to brain and body health, please visit: www.comeandreason.com.
Possible discussion topics for Dr. Jennings:
How do positive social interactions reduce our inflammatory markers?
How does wearing masks contribute to feelings of social isolation?
Explain epigenetic markers and the role they play in our ability to be resilient.
Explain how our life experiences can alter our gene expression and lead to improved resiliency.
Trish Stevens Helen Cook Senior Publicist Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 903.654.0938 Direct 281.333.3507 Office [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com
The Home Stretch: Uplifting Coming of Age Story Explores Complex Themes of Mortality and Forgiveness
(This press release may be reprinted in part or entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet, or used by any means of social media sharing.)
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The diagnosis of leukemia at age 43 laid bare a brief flirtation with escape for Bill Smith. After all, he had battled depression and suicidal thoughts from a young age; mortality was really nothing new for him to grapple with. To put it bluntly, for Bill Smith, the end had always been in view. But that life-defining moment — that brief descent into darkness — triggered a profound fight for survival.
The Home Stretch, from award-winning author Wayne M. Johnston, features everyman Bill Smith (loosely based on Johnston himself), who, throughout his life, is confronted with extraordinary circumstances. His is a coming of age story in which the peace that allegedly comes with maturity is often shunted aside to make room for yet another crisis. It is also an uplifting story in its candid, reality-based portrait of a man struggling to find personal integrity through challenging conditions.
From an early age, Bill grapples with depression. Raised in a religious cult, he cannot reconcile his own experience with the worldview of his parents, and although he’s bound to them by love and obligation, he rejects their beliefs. His father’s palpable disappointment in Bill leads him to contemplate suicide and to provoke his father into a confrontation with a surprising outcome that would redefine their relationship and alter the course of both of their lives.
Given to a physical, adventurous life, Bill becomes the chief engineer on a seagoing tugboat, and his tales of weathering gale-force winds and violent storms at sea provide metaphorical undercurrents for his fraught relationship with his father, his failed early marriage, his father’s descent into Alzheimer’s and his own battle with leukemia, which he is told will kill him. Just when Bill has come to believe he has put the worst of it to rest, he learns something more about his father that opens everything up again, except this time, Bill’s sister is the victim.
The Home Stretch is a poignant, ultimately inspiring coming of age story that weaves themes of mortality and forgiveness through life-defining moments of reckoning that many adults have to face head-on and learn to overcome.
Wayne M. Johnston taught English, Creative Writing and Publications at La Conner High School for 19 years. Prior to that, for 22 years he worked on tugboats, usually as chief engineer, towing freight barges between Canadian and West Coast American ports. In 2011, he won the Soundings Review First Publication Award for his essay, “Sailing,” and has published other essays locally. For his debut novel, North Fork, he drew from years of experience reading student journals to reproduce the way kids voice serious matters to a trusted adult. The Home Stretch is book two in a planned trilogy. North Fork was released in 2016 as a YA novel. The story is told through the voices of three 17-year-olds as journal entries for their English class. Bill Smith, the protagonist in The Home Stretch, is their English teacher, and The Home Stretch is his back story.
Johnston lives with his wife, Sally, on Fidalgo Island in Washington State where he is working on another book length project. Connect with the author on Facebook (
The Home Stretch Publisher: Black Heron Press ISBN-10: 1936364344 ISBN-13: 978-1936364343 Available from Amazon.com, BN.com, Target.com and anywhere books are sold
Trish Stevens Vicky Rockwell Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
Undercurrents of Mortality, Forgiveness Buoy Compelling Coming of Age Story
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For Bill Smith, the end has always been in view. And perhaps, in some metaphysical way, his occasional confrontations with the inevitable end that awaits us all made Bill better equipped to emerge intact from each crisis. His life, in fact, has been a series of highly unlikely extensions. This is his story.
The Home Stretch, from award-winning author Wayne M. Johnston, features everyman Bill Smith (loosely based on Johnston himself), who, throughout his life, is confronted with extraordinary circumstances. His is a coming of age story in which the peace that allegedly comes with maturity is often shunted aside to make room for yet another crisis. It is also an uplifting story in its portrait of a man struggling to find personal integrity through challenging conditions.
From an early age, Bill grapples with depression. Raised in a religious cult, he cannot reconcile his own experience with the worldview of his parents, and although he’s bound to them by love and obligation, he rejects their beliefs. His father’s palpable disappointment in Bill leads him to contemplate suicide and to provoke his father into a confrontation with a surprising outcome that would redefine their relationship and alter the course of both of their lives.
Given to a physical, adventurous life, Bill becomes the chief engineer on a seagoing tugboat, and his tales of weathering gale-force winds and violent storms at sea provide metaphorical undercurrents for his fraught relationship with his father, his failed early marriage, his father’s descent into Alzheimer’s and his own battle with leukemia, which he is told will kill him. Just when Bill has come to believe he has put the worst of it to rest, he learns something more about his father that opens everything up again, except this time, Bill’s sister is the victim.
The Home Stretch is a poignant, ultimately inspiring coming of age story that weaves themes of mortality and forgiveness through life-defining moments of reckoning that many adults have to face head-on and learn to overcome.
Wayne M. Johnston taught English, Creative Writing and Publications at La Conner High School for 19 years. Prior to that, for 22 years he worked on tugboats, usually as chief engineer, towing freight barges between Canadian and West Coast American ports. In 2011, he won the Soundings Review First Publication Award for his essay, “Sailing,” and has published other essays locally. For his debut novel, North Fork, he drew from years of experience reading student journals to reproduce the way kids voice serious matters to a trusted adult. The Home Stretch is book two in a planned trilogy. North Fork was released in 2016 as a YA novel. The story is told through the voices of three 17-year-olds as journal entries for their English class. Bill Smith, the protagonist in The Home Stretch, is their English teacher, and The Home Stretch is his back story.
Johnston lives with his wife, Sally, on Fidalgo Island in Washington State where he is working on another book length project.
The Home Stretch Publisher: Black Heron Press ISBN-10: 1936364344 ISBN-13: 978-1936364343 Available from Amazon.com, BN.com, Target.com and anywhere books are sold
Trish Stevens Megan Thomas Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
Why Buddha Never Had Alzheimer’s: The Answer Can Be Found In Med-itation, Yoga And Music
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There are currently 5.8 million people in the U.S. today suffering from Alzheimer’s – a number that is expected to double by the middle of the century. Is it possible to stop or slow down this disease? Award-winning physician, scientist and author, Dr. Shuvendu Sen, says “Yes! It can be reversed, and even stopped altogether.” Dr. Sen shares expert advice and discusses the success being achieved through yoga, meditation and dancing/music therapy in Why Buddha Never Had Alzheimer’s: A Holistic Treatment Approach through Meditation, Yoga and the Arts.
As the population of Americans with this disease continues to increase, so does the burden of caring for them. The cost of Alzheimer’s is staggering! This year alone, the cost for healthcare, long-term care and hospice services for those age 65 and older with dementia are estimated to be around $305 billion. Researchers in top institutions around the country indicate that the contributing factors to the disease (stress/hypertension) can be improved with holistic approaches, such as yoga, meditation, music and virtual reality therapy. We need an innovative breakthrough in order to make a difference; Why Buddha Never Had Alzheimer’s is the guide that can help make these necessary, far-reaching changes in medical care.
“How can meditation and yoga stop or even reverse Alzheimer’s?” he asks. “They set the mind on an inward journey, built on a novel microenvironment where stress and its damaging inflict are permanently thwarted. This bridging of the old and new creates an imperative paradigm shift in our perspective toward managing this disease.”
Listed in the US Top Physician’s list, Dr. Sen is the author of the bestselling book, A Doctor’s Diary, and is the recipient of the Nautilus Book Award, Men of Distinction Award from the New York State Senate, the Oscar Edwards Award from the American College of Physicians, and has been thrice nominated for the Pushcart Award for his columns and other works of fiction.
He has been an invited speaker to address United Nations officials, the New Jersey Senate, the Indian Consulate in New York, the World Book Fair, City University of New York, Harvard University and World Parliament of Religions. He has also been featured on many major television and radio stations.
Why Buddha Never Had Alzheimer’s: A Holistic Treatment Approach through Meditation, Yoga and the Arts HCI Publishers Also translated into French by the prestigious Hachette Foundation ISBN-10: 0757319947 ISBN-13: 978-0757319945 Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble
Trish Stevens Teresa Hinojosa Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 832.569.5773 Direct 281.333.3507 Phone 800.854.2207 Fax [email protected] ascotmedia.com
Trish Stevens Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 281.333.3507 Main/Office 832.334.2733 Cell [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com
(This press release may be reprinted in part or entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet, or used by any means of social sharing)
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Doctor Emerges From Losing Wife To Dementia To Share Compelling Story
Those who have emerged from the experience of caring for and losing a spouse or parent to dementia understand well how difficult the journey is. But for those whose loved one has just been diagnosed, Dr. Donald Hricik’s Lynne’s Last Christmas: A Battle With Dementia may be a helpful companion to have for the difficult journey ahead.
Lynne Hricik was diagnosed with the disease at age 64, and shortly after her death, Dr. Hricik penned Lynne’s Last Christmas within a few weeks as both a way of dealing with his and his family’s grief and to provide information about the disease and about caring for someone with dementia.
“I truly hope this book will provide some comfort to the many others who are caring for someone with this awful thing called dementia. You are not alone,” says Dr. Hricik.
In Lynne’s Last Christmas, Dr. Hricik recalls the last four years of his wife’s life during which she suffered memory loss and frequent falls. He also discusses the impact of her illness upon his children and close friends, and actually debated whether to have his children read the manuscript before it was published. All agreed that they should. “They cried when they read the final draft, but in sharing their thoughts, it brought back memories—both the good times and the bad times—we’d had during Lynne’s life,” he said.
The author also goes into detail about the condition itself. Dementia, he explains, isn’t a specific disease but rather a term that captures the group of symptoms associated with a decline in memory or other thinking skills. Though sometimes confused with Alzheimer’s disease, dementia is the overall group of which Alzheimer’s makes up 60-80 percent of cases.
Dr. Hricik is currently Alzheimer’s disease at Case Western Reserve University and served as the Chief of Nephrology and Hypertension at University Hospital’s Cleveland Medical Center from 1993 to 2017. His research interests have focused on complications of immunosuppression and immune monitoring of kidney transplant recipients. He has published more than 180 articles and books, and 35 book chapters.
Royalties from the book are being donated to the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America and to the University Hospitals of Cleveland Hospice Service.
To read more about Dr. Hricik, please visit: https://dhricik.wixsite.com/website-1.
Lynne’s Last Christmas: A Battle With Dementia
Kindle Direct Publishing
Released: December 4, 2018
ISBN-10: 1790751403
ISBN-13: 978-1790751402
Available from Amazon.com
