Glen and Aha: A Gentle Story

Glen Murdock was a widower, lived alone, and followed a routine. His life consisted of numbers. He had completed an entire career of teaching accounting at the community college, and he still did the taxes for a few long-term clients. Numbers, he understood. He didn't gamble, and now everything he had, his house and car, was paid for, and he lived off his retirement with a cushion in the bank. A good life, right? So what could possibly happen?

Glen Murdoch is a seventy-year-old widower living by himself in Des Moines, Washington during the early part of the twenty-first century. As a retired accounting instructor from a local community college, he enjoys an orderly and routine existence: morning coffee with friends at Carter's Market, a regular schedule of meals, household chores, trips to the store, and television programming. Everything in Glen's life is comfortably familiar, predictable, and a bit boring. One stormy spring morning, however, Glen's somewhat uninteresting life takes a 180 degree turn when he meets, by chance, down-on-her-luck Spirit Smith and Spirit's baby daughter, Aha. This chance encounter leads Glen, Spirit, Aha, and Pamela Redding, a much more-worldly latecomer to the morning gathering of "Carter's Market Regulars," on an exciting journey of self-discovery as they all expand their personal horizons.

Robin Buchan, a retired Professor of History from Highline College, Des Moines, Washington, also worked as a bread salesman and route supervisor in an earlier life. A lifelong resident of western Washington, Dr. Buchan now resides in a condominium overlooking the Des Moines Marina where he enjoys a magnificent view of Puget Sound and the close proximity of his large, extended family and wonderful neighbors and friends.