A Small Deception

Book excerpt: A Small Deception is a novel that explores the fatal consequences its characters must face when they let a situation be the determining factor in deciding what is right and wrong. While traveling to San Antonio for a short vacation, Morton Wynn sees a driver lose control of her Ford Mustang and plunge into a plowed field. He rescues her from her upturned, burning vehicle and takes her to a nearby hospital in Vista, a small West Texas town. Because she is an unwed expectant mother, Maggie Collins persuades him to pose as her husband so her conservative Christian father won’t be embarrassed by her situation and lose his positions as (1) an elder of a church trying to hold onto its fundamentalist beliefs and (2) a highly respected banker and councilman of a community trying to survive an economic downturn. Besides his immediate sexual entanglements with Maggie and her nubile sister, Morton also gets caught in a web of violence, including a horrifying murder by someone who desperately wants Maggie’s father to support a proposed nuclear power plant he has staunchly opposed.