In Gathering Roses, introverted and studious Lori Solomon meets nonconformist Grateful Dead follower, Nick Warren, and soon finds herself on a seemingly endless carnival ride with him. Although not always apparent to Lori, it is Nick's precarious health condition that seems to underlie his outlook on life, influencing what he expects to get out of it as well as what he feels he needs to put into it. Lori's quirky, roller coaster relationships with cynical, substance-abusing Rutherford Gimby and borderline, melodramatic Angela Allen season the stew, their faults and vices mirroring Lori's own shortcomings. The main characters in Gathering Roses share in common a neediness/dependency on something outside of themselves that they all lean toward to fill an agonizing emptiness. For Lori and Angela, low self-esteem and a poor self-image attract each to challenging and walled-off souls like Nick and Rutherford. For the men, sex, alcohol, and drugs color their past and present, keeping the barriers surrounding them erected high and impervious to real emotional attachment.Gathering Roses is a story written from the heart. Geared toward a young, female audience, it is a tale that is meant to be not just entertaining, but also thought-provoking.Book Extract
Lori's internship at the radio station continued. She was assigned to start working some of her weekend shifts apart from Nick, and instead alongside a young woman named Helga. Like Lori, Helga had limited experience in radio and was training as she worked on the job. The conversations Lori had with her were short and focused only on the tasks at hand, which made for a very different atmosphere than the one Lori had grown accustomed to working alongside Nick. It also made for an atmosphere that she didn't enjoy nearly as much.
It was the evening after a long day of battling stream after stream of whiny complaints from Prima Donna talk show hosts, while taking care to press all the right buttons and shift levers in a timely fashion. Lori settled comfortably in her seat and looked over at Helga, ready to reflect on what she thought was a decent day's work, when the control room door opened. A frazzled, bearded black man stood a few feet away from the girls, pinching an inkless pen tightly between his thumb and forefinger. He tossed the pen angrily into a nearby garbage can.
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