Advertisements for myself: Kerouac's Scroll

Kerouac's Scroll
Charles Deemer
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Here's the pitch:

TWO OLD MEN ON THE ROAD
  
  Best friends for over half-a-century, Hooker and Bear
  decide to drive 3000 miles across the country, west
  coast to east, in order to see “the Kerouac Scroll” (the
  original manuscript of On the Road) on display at the
  Smithsonian in Washington D.C.
  
  Each brings a deep secret to the journey: Hooker
  has terminal cancer; and Bear has been accused of
  child abuse by his estranged daughter, 30 years after
  the alleged incident occurred.
  
  With the humor of "Grumpy Old Men" and the heart
  of "Tuesdays With Morrie", KEROUAC'S SCROLL tells the
  story of two old men in the twilight of their lives as
  they shape an extraordinary adventure on the road to
  bring meaning and integrity to the end of their life journeys.
  
  KEROUAC'S SCROLL is a literary, darkly comic novel of 58,000 words.

This novel has found a few fans, especially among writer-colleagues. Here are two:

 Your novel "Kerouac's Scroll" knocked me out. Ripping yarn, as the Brits would say, but more significant, a story that is as honest as the day is long. You understand life (and the story form to express it). [I do have, however, a quibble with the ending. Happy to discuss.] Your writing is elegant in its direct simplicity, not a false or unnecessary word, and I can't say how much I admire that.

 Have just finished Kerouac's Scroll..what an achievement!  Reading it reminded me instantly of the many conversations we had 15 years ago in and around Nobbyland.  It was a fine pleasure, indeed, to hear your voice throughout.  And pleased especially to find Orofino (my father's birthplace) has at last secured its deserved place in literature. Please accept my heartiest congratulations for having crafted a story so generous to the enduring human spirit.  It works on so many levels that sitting in my chair, the closed book happy in my lap, I feel like one of Angel's aliens might feel after having just played and won a particularly satisfying three-dimensional chess match.

(Actually those conversations were closer to 25 years ago!)

I never expected the novel to sell much, which is why I have no second thoughts about offering free electronic versions.

• Free Kindle copy 
• Free PDF 

Here's a sample.

That morning began my indoctrination into the Church of God’s Country, the  Pacific Northwest, especially the logging country along the Clearwater River in northern Idaho where Hooker was raised. To the ears of an LA boy, his tales of all night poker games and one week runs from small town bar to small town bar along dirt roads through the hills above the Clearwater, of loose women and rough loggers, had the ring of a Hollywood western – and I listened spellbound, as fascinated as I’d been as a kid at a Saturday Hopalong Cassidy marathon. When I got discharged, and Hooker right behind me, I made my first trip to the Northwest and Hooker’s home town of Orofino expecting a jolt of reality, the reality that belied two years’ of listening to wild stories about this so-called God’s Country, Hooker’s birthplace.

On the surface, at least, Hooker’s country lived up to its praise. On each side of the narrow road that twisted and turned alongside the river from Lewiston to Orofino, hills rose to form dense forests stretching up and beyond the visible summit. I’d never seen so many trees in my life. Welcome to God’s country.

Hooker was staying with his mother while looking for a house in nearby Moscow, where the University of Idaho was, so he could bring up his wife and young sons, who were waiting in California where Hooker had been discharged. I was looking forward to partying with Hooker to forget my marital troubles at home, though separation from Helen was still several months away. I’d made the trip to Idaho alone. I was worried, however, that his mother might dampen our style. But I couldn’t turn down a visit when I was only a long day’s drive away, having moved to Oregon to start graduate school.

I found the address Hooker had provided on a wooded street in the hills above the river. I parked behind two cars in the driveway and went to the door. When it opened, a woman barely five foot tall was staring up at me, grinning. She had red hair and a mischievous glint in her eye. Hooker’s mother.

The first thing out of her mouth was, “So you’re the fucking bear.”

Her name was Flo. A feisty woman who used the vernacular of a hard-drinking logger, she didn’t dampen our party style. She inspired it. She kept up with us drink for drink and kept me in stitches with stories about cooking in a logging camp as a young woman and later dealing cards in one of Orofino’s whore houses. Flo rattled off ribald one-liners all night long. Some of them I remember to this day. “She was so fat if she had a broom stick up her ass, she could sweep both sides of the street."