A presentation
To Find the Girl from Perth
(a fictional adventure set in Western Australia)
By David Chadwick
dchad3[at]sonic.net
www.cuke.com
David Chadwick is the author of
Crooked Cucumber: the Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki, Broadway Books,1999.
Thank You and OK: an American Zen Failure in Japan, Shambhala, May 2007. (Originally Penguin Arkana 1994)
Zen Is Right Here, Teaching Stories and Anecdotes of Shunryu Suzuki, Author of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Shambhala, October 2007, by Shunryu Suzuki, Edited by David Chadwick (Originally To Shine One Corner of the World: Moments with Shunryu Suzuki, Broadway Books, 2001.)
***********
To Find the Girl from Perth is Chadwick’s first work of fiction, written like Thank You and OK, in the form of a memoir. It’s 108,000 words long.
Contents
Introduction - George What?
Part One - Wandering Around
Chapter 1 - Lion City
Chapter 2 - Uncle Rudy
Chapter 3 - Flying Nude
Chapter 4 - The Girls from Perth
Chapter 5 - Firkin Sexes
Chapter 6 - Dwellingup
Chapter 7 - Indian Ocean
Chapter 8 - Dunsborough
Chapter 9 - Margaret River
Chapter 10 - Apollo Roundup
Chapter 11 - Rottsnest
Chapter 12 - Freo
Chapter 13 - Perth
Chapter 14 - the Glitterati
Chapter 15 - Crawlin
Part Two - Treasure Hunt
Chapter 16 - Desperate Meeting
Chapter 17 - Fenster
Chapter 18 - Steel Metaphors
Chapter 19 - Hiding
Chapter 20 - Seeking
Chapter 21 - On Anon
Chapter 22 - Teamwork
Chapter 23 - Dunder
Chapter 24 - Knot Cutting
Chapter 25 - Amazing Maze
Chapter 26 - Swan River
Chapter 27 - Planning Deportment
Chapter 28 - Deminted
Chapter 29 - Lucking
Chapter 30 - Surprise
Chapter 31 - Amenity
Chapter 32 - Crocashit
Chapter 33 - Party to Crime
Chapter 34 - G’bye
Major Characters in order of Appearance
David, Aussie nickname - Davo - last name not used – narrator, Texan who’s lived in San Francisco Bay Area most adult life, has studied and written about Japan and Zen, is in Western Australia to visit his friend Francine.
Jackie Gupta called Gupta, Aussie nickname - Guppy – a 32 year old from New Orleans – Calcutta dad and Belfast mom. Dropped biology teaching for more lucrative real estate job. Has a background in Hinduism, knows a bit about Buddhism. Does yoga. Has a loveaholic tendency. Goes to Perth with David. Falls totally for Mindy.
Rudy Dugan called Rudy – head of a Melbourne criminal gang, tough guy, no nonsense, simple, likeable. Gupta’s distant uncle. Mindy’s Uncle. Fenster’s enemy.
Francine, Frannie - last name not used – Whom David went to visit. A gentle, sensitive, yet spunky Aussie woman in her thirties who takes care of the intellectually challenged (retarded, brain damaged). Does crafts. Highly compassionate. Her mother is dying of skin cancer. She and David have a close, platonic relationship. Needs to find boyfriend who’s up to her.
Melinda Dugan called Mindy, Bluey – Rudy’s niece. Wild, attractive, rich, personable, not always dependable redhead. She is given the task by Rudy of showing her distant cousin Gupta around. They immediately become passionate, indulgent lovers. Mindy and Francine become good friends.
Sam Collins called Samo – retired detective whom David meets at Freemantle Zen group. He reveals that Rudy’s a dangerous gangster. He studies Affect Psychology with real life Ian who is the teacher of the Freemantle Zen group.
Techo – quiet, punky, pierced, tattooed computer whiz. Drives a souped up 55 Chevy.
Ross Bolleter – real life Zen teacher and Dharma pal of Tazi John (who’s mentioned now and then and whose barn David lives in California in real life too). Ross is well known for his tango piano and accordion playing, world renowned in avant guard music circles for his ruined piano CDs. A likable, bear of a guy. He only enters in person three times but his tango music and ruined pianos play a major role in the treasure hunt. Plays a surprise impromptu ruined piano concert in finale.
Bobby Fenster, Waxo – Outrageous head of a criminal syndicate in Melbourne. Rudy’s rival. Has beachfront getaway in resort town Dunsborough. He and Rudy are in a gang war that has killed over twenty (Melbourne gang war is real). We get to know not only fanatic Fenster and his peculiar, self-serving take on Buddhism but his four heroes (all real) – Phar Lap, the great Aussie race horse of the thirties; Robina, a female Aussie Rimpoche who works in prisons; Joan Sutherland, the great Aussie diva; and Genghis Khan who Fenster sees as having combined mass murder with wisdom, war with peace, killing with emptiness.
The Mysterious Aborigine - He tails Mindy which makes her mad but she won’t let Gupta intervene. As the story progresses he becomes more important.
Gelar Waters – Mindy’s estranged husband who has her name, Melinda, tattooed on his chest and who searches for a woman with that name.
Other Characters
Simon – Down Syndrome friend and client of Francine’s.
The cute, round, furry marsupials called quokkas.
The Disappointed Ravens with their distinctive call.
Stan – Fenster’s valet. Polite, quiet, efficient.
The Goony Twins – Half-foot and Shorts - Fenster’s go-to guys, quiet and ruthless.
Kelly and Clay – David’s older and younger sons in America whom he send emails to which he doesn’t realize are being intercepted by Fenster’s tech guy, Sid.
Mai – a Malaysian woman whom David meets on the flight to Perth to visit her sister and brother-in-law. Interested in Christian Mysticism.
The Aboriginal Buckster - a homeless street musician with a sad, apocryphal tale.
Mr. Vargas – an Argentine banker who is a fan of Ross Bolleter’s tango music.
Johnno - one of the three gangsters who is involved with Mindy’s kidnapping and who falls in love with her.
Sid – Fenster’s tech guy who runs his porn web sites and develops games and puzzles to incorporate in them – and who must be the mastermind behind a most interesting development in the treasure hunt.
Crocashit – a huge crocodile that guards the sewer entrance to Fenster’s Amenity Funeral Home.
Venues
of interest not explained elsewhere.The Maze in the Sequoias – an amusement park near Perth with five mazes and a zoo.
Dwellingup – the one pub town where Francine lives with its woods, river, cemetery, and Forest Heritage Museum.
The group home for the intellectually challenged in Mandurah.
The Indian Ocean Restaurant where lovers can find a nifty place to tryst.
Leeuwin Vineyards and Winery in scenic Margaret River (Western Australia’s Napa).
The Freemantle Prison with its ghostly gallows and the Maritime Museum there with its claustrophobic submarine tour.
Pubs - with Mindy’s long red hair hanging from the ceiling or Australian Rules Footy on the telly.
The Swan River – a lovely walk along it from Perth to Freemantle that could lead to danger
The Perth Mint – with its gift shop, tour of the history and making of gold commemorative coins capped by the pour of the gold brick, tempting along with the even larger brick in the Plexiglas case into which tourists can reach and try to lift.
Amenity – Fenster’s funeral home chain with useful crematoriums, especially one in Perth.
The Perth Sewer system, good for hiding
Restaurants and night clubs.
Summary
David, an American Zen failure, this time is in an Australian caper which takes the reader with him from a near miss California heart attack to Singapore where, in the orchid section of the beautiful botanical gardens, he encounters Gupta from New Orleans. At the airport hotel they meet Gupta’s distant Uncle Rudy, a domineering tough guy who sends him with David to Western Australia where David is to meet dear friend Francine. Rudy arranges for his niece, Mindy, to show Gupta around and tells David to keep an eye on them. Rudy makes a date to dine with them in Perth in a month.
David, Francine, Gupta, and Mindy become fast friends. Gupta and Mindy become lovers which Rudy had warned against. In the rest of the first half of the book we get to know these four better against the backdrop of the forested countryside and some of the most interesting sights of Western Australia. A mysterious aborigine follows Mindy. David learns from Samo, a retired detective he meets at a Freemantle Zen meeting, that Rudy is the dangerous head of one of the major gangs in Melbourne. They meet Ross Bolleter, Zen teacher and musician. Mindy breaks Gupta’s heart by ending their affair but not their friendship. Gupta bemoans his fate as he and David go on a walking tour of Perth ending with a visit to the Perth Mint where they talk, for fun about how to rob it. That night, Gupta, David, and Techo go pub crawling with Mindy. They run off to escape the mysterious aborigine. At the end of Part One she’s singing and dancing away from the boys in the wee hours on the wet streets when a black hearse zooms up and she’s taken away into the night.
Part two begins with the retired detective Samo joining David, Gupta, and Techo in the desperate search to find Mindy – to save her and, at the same time, to save David and Gupta from Rudy’s wrath. Gupta and David go to confront Rudy’s rival, gang boss Bobby Fenster, at his beachfront getaway. He’s an obsessive character with a warped interpretation of Buddhism who, after frightening the boys with his goons, sends them on a mind-bending treasure hunt to find Mindy. Francine joins in. Samo discovers something that makes it look like Mindy wasn’t kidnapped by Fenster but by her estranged husband. Back at Mindy’s home in Perth, David, Gupta, and Francine are met by a threatening man in the dark with a machete. This encounter sheds new and surprising light on the search for Mindy. The treasure hunt continues to change, expand, and take the unexpected form of a maze which then leads to another most unpredictable form – into the bowels of cyberspace. Madman Fenster continues to surface and shock, there is a failed raid to free Mindy from her kidnappers at the old Swan Brewery, a brazen attempt to rob the Perth Mint with unexpected results which lead to the crematorium of the Amenity Funeral Home and into the Perth sewer system. The question is, will the treasure hunt gang save Mindy in time to get her to the dinner date with Rudy?
Read the Introduction-George What?
NaNoWriMo
DC's comments on National
Novel Writing Month