Aberrant Behavior
This novel describes a two-week period in New York City that shapes the destiny of three generations of the Bonn family. A book signing tour for Ray Bonn’s book ‘Aberrations of Relativity’ has ended in Manhattan. He meets the brilliant postdoctoral student Lesa Landau who has been charged with providing the physics establishment’s negative opinion of Ray’s book on the Larry King Live national TV show. However brilliant, Lesa is capricious; she finds a lot to like in Ray’s book including a reference which leads to a collaboration on a new thermodynamics book describing the discovery of the origin of entropy, all arranged hilariously on live TV. As collateral damage on the subsequent televised clash of wills on Larry King Live, Ray is forced into going up to bat in Yankee Stadium as a gimmick arranged by another hilarious interaction – this time between Lesa and George Steinbrenner who extemporaneously called into the show to disagree with Lesa concerning whether her ‘boyfriend’ could even hit major league fastballs. (This excerpt from pages 142 to 148 describes that incident.) Lesa agrees to ‘duct tape’ Ray to a million dollar contract to settle that argument and promote book sales. During the interval before the game when they are not on speaking terms, Ray looks up and finds Lesa’s biological father to help resolve what he perceives as a post traumatic stress syndrome disorder. Finally Ray returns to a life down what he had always considered to be a serene little street in a hemlock forest in the northwest where he was born and raised, but now with apprehensions.