The One That Got Away

Brad Danley, a self-made man who relied on all his Southern heritage with a blend of formal education, was not prepared for what karma held for him and his fellow residents of the lazy South Alabama town of Fullerton. He had faced many challenges as a field social worker in charge of the protection of many of his county's vulnerable children, and in some of the situations he failed miserably to live up to the expectations of his family upbringing, the rules and regulations of his State agency and his God. Amazingly a fat, old catfish at the bottom of the Wallahatchee network was about to turn Brad's life topsy turvy in a series of mystical and horrifying events that he could never expect or foretell even in his most outrageous nightmares.

A retired child welfare social worker and a self-taught artist, Gary W. Mitchell has lived in South Alabama for most of his life. An integral part of his upbringing was a close relationship with family and to the land which sustained him, his relatives and friends that shared the myths and truths of the region. The mixture of folklore, Christian principles and knowledge attained from life experiences made the author the man that he is today, and his writing and artwork exhibit these eclectic, and sometimes diametrically opposing, factors in his makeup. Educated in the sciences, mainly biology and chemistry, the author chose to follow a career path that was more in line with the compassion of his Christian upbringing: the protection of children from abuse, neglect and exploitation of varying types and degrees, while maintaining in his practice the importance of families in the lives of those vulnerable persons he was charged to protect. His real life experiences both from work and from family life are very evident in the telling of this fictional story involving all the aspects of rural South Alabama life.