Last Things First Things
Wells Earl Draughon
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2003 iUniverse
ISBN: 0595269427

Val believes his life is ending. Erin believes hers is not. Both may be wrong.

Since his divorce, Val has submitted to a Dilbert-esque life as a computer engineer. Now he's about to get married again, when he sees the dread word cancer on his chart during a check-up. So that's why he's been feeling ill! Unable to trust doctors to tell him the awful truth, Val plans for the last months of his life. What to do? Party? Splurge? Or something else? Faced with the last things in his life, which things come first?

Erin leaves her latest physical check-up buoyed by the results. If only she knew why her energy level is so erratic. Still, her doctor hasn't told her any devastating news, so she'll just get on with her life. She's got her dream house to design, an infant to adopt & her own architecture company to start. She does not know that her doctor has decided to withhold the most important diagnosis of her life.

Val & Erin meet briefly as they're leaving the hospital complex. She tells him she's leaving for Mykonos. He doesn't tell her his news. There's something there, though. & then they separate to go on with their lives.

Val has some savings, & when his fiancee balks at the idea of marrying a dying man, he tells the company to shove it, sells everything off & decides to splurge.

Erin's just held her little baby all the way from the Far East when her sister delivers the worst kind of news: her marriage has fallen apart &, “Please, take Amy with you when you go to Greece!” Erin & her teenage niece have always been friends, so both set out for the Aegean Sea with adventure in mind. Pretty Amy is hormone-central & Erin tries to keep her safe as local Lotharios buzz around eager to show the pretty young woman a good time.

Things haven't gone well for Val. He's like a boat with no rudder, hurtling from one quick-fix to the next. Then he remembers Erin & his feelings when he met her. Suddenly the only place he wants to be is on Mykonos where he can find her again.

That having been said, Last Things First Things is a fascinating tale of two people royally screwed by the medical community, quite incapable of making sense of their changed circumstances, & ricocheting off of hysteria, stress, loneliness & modesty.

What a strange, exciting, frustrating & sometimes, hilarious story! Wells Earl Draughon has written a fine dark romance in which everyone is asking those basic questions about life:
Why me?
Why now?
What should I do?
Sometimes they find the answers after they've narrowly missed death, & sometimes the answers hit them between the eyes.

Very well done!

Visit the author's website at: www.WellsEarlDraughon.com
(08/15/04)

Rebecca