Well Considered

Well Considered
281 Pages
ISBN 978-1-4502-0388-3

"The past crashes into the future: This book is a page turner, weaving together the tales of two families, one white, one African-American, as they confront their past and stumble towards their future. The lives of their ancestors collided a century ago, and through a suspenseful plot, they collide again today, in "Patuxent County" outside Washington DC. Morris lives in Prince George's County, Maryland, one of the most diverse in the country, and locals will recognize this region and its complex history as the basis for his novel.

The descendants of slaves and sharecroppers, tobacco farmers and white supremacists live side by side with recent implants. The location is a microcosm for the rest of the nation, and the characters, dialogue, and interracial relationships, as well as the action and drama, will hold much interest for all readers.

Morris has a wry sense of humor and a deft ear for dialog between characters having many different racial and cultural backgrounds. Also, as we saw in his Vietnam-era novel, Cologne No. 10 for Men, Morris knows how to put together gripping action scenes. And his deep humanity comes across in the way the story resolves." Michael A. Gollin, Esq., author of Driving Innovation and Innovation Life Love

A novel of suspense, mystery, history, and humor, as Ron Watkins looks into the 1907 mob murder of his great-grandfather on a Maryland tobacco plantation. "A profoundly memorable and affecting novel" -- Robert Fleming, AALBC.com "A multilayered thriller" -- Kirkus Discoveries

Richard A Morris

About Richard A Morris (Washington, DC Author)

Richard A Morris

When Richard Morris (8/16/43-11/21/17) died suddenly, he had begun his fifth “social justice” novel during the span of a ten-year retirement from his career in the building industry. In addition to the novels, he wrote over two hundred blog posts (www.richardmorrisauthor.wordpress.com/blog) on writing and the promotion of writing, as well as the social justice issues which propelled his stories. At the time of his death, Morris had just completed blog posts related to the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick series on The Vietnam War in which he reviewed each episode, described how his own life fit into the narrative, and commented upon how he and the country had both been on “The Wrong Side of History.” This brought his writing full circle from when he commenced it with a funny but heartrending Cologne No. 10 for Men, which satirized the use of the body count as a means of determining whether your side is winning a war.

In hindsight it may be noted that ten times in his blog posts, Morris wrote about Agent Orange as one of the many lingering tragedies of the Vietnam war. But he never linked to his own narratives that Agent Orange was the presumptive cause of the cancer which had caused his retirement. This was also the cancer that led to an emergency surgery that ended with complications and his death. As part of his writings about war, Morris also produced a CD, Skytroopers: Songs of war, peace, and love from Vietnam (www.cdbaby.com/cd/RichardMorris) of nineteen songs he wrote while serving as a rifle platoon leader with the First Cavalry (Airmobile) Division in Vietnam.

Well Considered and Canoedling in Cleveland were novels Richard Morris wrote which had themes of racial and environmental justice woven into historical thriller and adventure plots. Masjid Morning incorporated Morris’s many years of construction, codes, and zoning experience into an interfaith romance which explores the emotional struggles between religions. Morris’s novels may be found at online bookstores.