Showing results by author "Robert Wintner" in All Categories

The year when everything needed to be experienced and tried, when innocence was tempted, played, and lost. 1969 was that pivotal year for the baby boomers. Young and innocent, they were given the ultimate freedoms and were faced with growing up. This touching, hilarious memoir is the true story of a late sixties grand tour of Europe a life-defining parable, for those who remember and for those who can’t.

Nine million Americans are touched by aneurysms during their lifetimes. This is one story of love. Brainstorm is the candid and powerful memoir of the author's harrowing experience of an aneurysm and his road to recovery. It is a journey of love and devotion and a clash of medical beliefs and countercultures.

The Modern Outlaws are riders of a new century. We laugh like honest men at a rotary luncheon. We shake hands on our new business, understanding that it doesn’t mean shit, not one speck of it, because getting lost and becoming someone else begins with the utterance of your very name. We pulsate on a single idea, which is that of recapturing in the next 10 days what we’ve missed for the last 30 years. Where the early years were gilded with promise, the middle years assure these men that this is it, what it all comes down to, what happened to us.

When Waties Waring left his wife of 30 years for a "Yankee spitfire", he dropped a turd into the local teacup. Charleston (SC) society banished him forever. He, in turn, became the first federal judge in US history to rule that separate but equal is not equal, the hallmark of civil rights in America. Robert Wintner, the author's, tale begins at Judge Waties Waring's funeral, the day Arthur Covingdale, an up-and-coming attorney, must come to terms with his own vengeful role. This narrative is based on actual events, with the course of history accurately represented.  

Whirlaway is literary fiction, a high-seas romp drawn on real time in a delusional era. What happens when two young entrepreneurs inherit nothing and decide to rob a bank the modern way, with lies on paper to finance a sailing yacht? 

Ravid Rockulz has a good life as a dive leader in Hawaii: good friends, good times, plenty of willing female tourists. But something is missing. What’s more, he’s increasingly disillusioned with Hawaii. The influx of new residents seeking Paradise with all the modern conveniences is dragging the islands ever closer to that scab on the world, LA. An unexpected heartbreak and a disconcerting attempt on his life push Ravid out of his rut: Tahiti calls, untrammeled and pure. There, Ravid rediscovers a passion for photography.

Touch of the Unknown Rider picks up 20 years down the road from where The Modern Outlaws left off. Buster Fetteroff is strong in purchasing power but adrift in life and love, motivation and destination. Seeking something more, he dreams of beautiful wilderness. He and Larraine are still fit but attract second looks more from others than each other. They share a house but lead separate lives with different values and varying tastes. Applying the good sense between them, they navigate the fork in the road.

Reefdog is an adventure of a book about Oceania and the accelerating race between nature and humanity. Ravi Rockulz, dive leader, grows weary, pushing 40 and still lugging tanks. He has friends and many acquaintances; tourists on the seven-day cycle. He seeks change but meets a woman who changes his perspective on life adrift.

A young man of promise in the late '60s veers to LSD and cosmic light. Stepping away from university to cult life, he steps into pastel jammies, chanting, dancing, and tingling finger cymbals. Passersby yell and laugh, and he laughs back, niched in bliss. Natural intelligence takes him to operational management as labor and meditation define purpose for years until...harsh truth drops like a turd in the punch bowl; a small one, but still. Would you like a cup? He’d challenged the elders of his childhood. What did you do when you had the chance?

With no capacity to accept, adapt, or move on, Ravi is stuck. Minna and Leihua, the wife and daughter, commiserate, but they leave for LA for showbiz. Justin, the son, advises wisely and foolishly before heading back to the yacht-racing circuit. Ravi rides his scooter around Moorea at all hours, in all weather, to no avail, except for further discouragement on the world and its undoing. In Hawaii, he stumbles onto subterranean players jousting for money and power. Inuring himself to the world, he ignores an unknown caller, but gives in to sporting whim.

Robust yet complex, these vintage domestics sparkle on the palate with innuendo and overtone. Fruity, nutty, buttery in part; the oak is constrained, the acid balanced with an easy follow and hardly a recoil on the pungent recollection.

Crux is not a Christian book but a collection of secular stories, a few of which underscore Christianity’s obtrusion on others. In these examples, context is Southern Indiana long ago, a lovely natural setting and sometimes harsh backdrop for a young Jew. History is rife with abuse. Personal baggage is unpacked here, no offense intended.