Sam Butler thinks his life should be about pastern dermatitis, least common denominators and the sophomore pole vaulter from Slovenia. But it isn't. Sam is a retired widower, who lives a quiet, well-ordered life looking after a small herd of off-the-track Thoroughbreds. Ellen Quincy is a home-schooled 'tweener, whose family raises chickens on the other side of the highway. Lynda Stratford is a young physics professor from the nearby university. This odd and non-romantic triangle forms in the fall of 2012, and the story follows the three of them for the next six months, a half-year in which Sam's life is turned inside-out, profoundly and perhaps forever changed. It's a story about love and friendship, about loyalty and its breach, about what's lost and what's found. A story about horses, lasers, and a young girl, wondering about life, death and what follows. ROBERT LAURENCE was the Robert A. Leflar Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. He also taught at the University of North Dakota and Florida State University, and at the American Indian Law Center in Albuquerque and at the Kulkereskedelmi F iskola (College for Foreign Trade) in Budapest. Now retired, he looks after equally retired racehorses near Hindsville, Arkansas. His first novel, "Departure Lounge," a story about love, travel and the curative powers of solitude, was also published by Sunstone Press."