To be honest, my reason is quite simple — pure escapism! At few other times in this country's history has there been such a dire need to escape from the awful reality of what's happening in Washington, DC. Except perhaps for periods like the Civil War, the Great Depression, or the events of 9/11.
Recently, I chanced to speak with a delightful woman who works at a costume shop in Littleton, MA, who observed that her business, which depends on customers buying items of clothing for "fun" occasions, had a pronounced dip in sales for months following the 9/11 tragedy.
I also had the privilege of viewing a movie (is that what you 21st century folks call it?) called "Sullivan's Travels," about a screenwriter in the 1940s, who wanted to write a script about the "great American tragedy," based on the suffering of jobless and homeless people in the Great Depression. After he goes out on the road for his own in-depth research (and inadvertently winds up in the same hopeless situation as the citizens he was planning to write about), he concludes that what movie-goers really wanted to see was not more misery and tragedy (which they already had enough of), but rather some humor and comedy to lift them out of their present mood... to give them something to laugh at, to feel good about, when so much else in their lives was drab, dark, and filled with doom and gloom.
And, so that, dear reader, is why I chose to write "Who's Whom, Ben?" It doesn't really have biting political satire that directly speaks to the turmoil in our nation's capital (unless perchance you read it between the lines). But what it does have is adventure, romance, fantasy, mystery, history, and most importantly, humor!
Just to read about yours truly trying to imitate the gobble-gobble sounds of a turkey while eluding some scurrilous ne'er-do-wells in a coal mine in Whitehaven, England is well worth the modest price of this book!
Your humble servant,
B.Franklin
To learn more about the book, click here.