Secrets of The Picnic Table

In this powerfully evocative life changing Canadian poesy, a book editor retreats from city life to a secluded mountain lodge for relaxation and contemplation. It doesn't happen. While there, scanning mountain vistas with a pair of old binoculars, he happens upon a couple making love on a mountain meadow. Witnessing this, and the unfolding courtroom miracle, forces self-evaluation causing him to question his manhood, career, and relationships, reigniting a youthful dream. Shocked to discover the identity of the couple, he confronts self-maryrdom and embraces his destiny.

Named after 1950's U.S. Traveling Evangelist Oral Roberts, William Oral Robert Coombes was born in Oshawa, Ontario Canada on September 11, 1952 to be adopted shortly thereafter. Both his adopted and genetic parents were acquainted members of Pentecostalism and both claimed they were doing God's will. He was then removed from his family of origin and adopted by an older couple to grow up attending the same schools and living in the same neighbourhood as genetic siblings. However well intended their decisions may have been, the confusion undermining his formative and developmental years tossed him overboard into an extended identity crisis, struggles with abandonment depression/anxiety, and an unusual dissociative gift. It has been through more than four decades of devotion to life saving therapeutic/cathartic writing and abstract expressionistic art, that he has learned to recognize some of the gifts received from life experiences. Selections from The Journals of William R. Coombes, Secrets of The Picnic Table is the first release from his journals in the category of fiction and is exemplary of how he continues the write of his life... the write for his life. He is a member of the Saskatchewan Writers' Guild and resides in a small town in southwestern Saskatchewan, Canada.