Palouse Writing Project - 4. Palouse Summary

SPOILER Warning: This is a summary of the story, not the story itself; the purpose is to provide fellow writers with the background of the writing decisions that will be made over the course of the next year. Those who want to see the finished story will have to wait.

The story will be loosely divided into three parts—childhood and recognition of genius; success, hubris and downfall; recovery and redemption.

The main characters (tentatively named) are:

• Micah Kingman—a mixed-race boy adopted by the Kingman family who is a genius at a musical instrument—maybe a violin; maybe a cello.
• David Stirling—Micah’s musician acquaintance, friend, antagonist, inspiration, lover and eventual life mate.
• Betty Kingman—Micah’s adoptive mother of eight children an natural mother of one, who teaches piano and raises her family, including her extremely talented son Micah.
• Stan Kingman—Betty’s wheat-farmer husband and father of nine children
• Robert Louis Kingman—Betty’s and Stan’s natural son who has fled from the farm to the Far East because of the overbearing demands of his father to make the farm an ongoing enterprise. He appears in Jake’s Side and is a life mate to Sam Peterson.
• Jessica Marie, Stanley Jr., Katherine, Henry, Samantha, Ricardo, Maria and Gregory—the Kingmans other children, all adopted.
• Marty Newman—a troubled, closeted gay boy who Micah befriends at the isolated school he is sent to for a year.
• Robbie and Jake Ellis-Cantwell—Robert Kingman’s friends in Seattle who assist Micah financially and with connections in his career, from Jake’s Hand and Jake’s Side.
• Others, as necessary

Part 1- Childhood and Genius

The story opens with Micah in a van with his adoptive mother, Betty, from the Spokane Airport to the Kingman farm, which lies in the Palouse country of Eastern Washington. Micah has been in the foster-child system all his life, and he doesn’t expect anything different from the Kingmans. The Kingmans, on the other hand, have adopted seven other children and fully plan to adopt Micah as well. The story will explore Micah’s and the Kingmans’ early adjustments. The Kingmans are a very religious family.

All the Kingman children are expected to play the piano with lessons from Betty Kingman, but Micah takes to the music like no other child. In snooping around the house, Micah comes across a musical instrument in a trunk in the attic that he decides to “borrow” to play after getting a book from the library to teach him. He finds a “secret” glen amongst the lava formations that becomes his practice place, and he spends hours each day playing his instrument.

His mother discovers Micah’s extraordinary talent—maybe after a dramatic search when he doesn’t appear for dinner one day—when she finds him at his secret place with the borrowed instrument.

Thus begins Betty’s devotion to Micah and his talent—to the detriment of her attention to his siblings. She finds a talented teacher for him, enters him into contests and nurtures his young career. During one of his solo performances, Micah meets and shares a hotel room with David Stirling, who plays another instrument in a youth orchestra tour. They will share hotel rooms over the next few years during Micah’s rise to fame. David is smitten by Micah; Micah is oblivious to David’s feelings.

Robert Kingman arrives for a visit—his first in a dozen years—accompanied by his life mate, Sam Peterson. Their relationship is extremely disturbing to Betty; Stan is more accepting, because he has lost his son once and does not want to lose Robert again. Robert bonds with his siblings, who don’t know him, and especially with Micah, now entering puberty. Robert and Sam go off to visit Jake and Robbie Ellis-Cantwell in Seattle. After hearing about Micah’s talent, Jake and Robbie offer to pay for lessons and to sponsor Micah in national music contests. Betty, disturbed by their sexuality, reluctantly accepts their help.

Part 2 – Success, Hubris and Downfall

Micah’s rise to fame is meteoric, a term that is not overused in his case. He wins national contests and is invited to solo with some of the great orchestras of the country—living in first-class splendor. But there is something missing. Micah has never had to struggle with the angst, worries, and the sex, drugs and alcohol choices of a teenager. He has bypassed those problems and been accepted as an adult, even though there is a large gap in his experience. On one level he is mature beyond all dreams. On another, he is still a pre-pubescent child. Like many child actors, sports superstars and the like, he is empty within.

His immaturity comes to a head at a solo performance in [city to be decided]. He is mobbed by what would be groupies in the rock business and asked to parties where he is exposed to the temptations of a teenager. He succumbs to a rush of alcohol, some drugs and sex—those things he has bypassed in his career—and something snaps in him. The pressure that he has put himself under—and his mother has encouraged—crumbles, and Micah decides that he wants to be a normal teenager and can play his instrument at the same time.

He can’t do both, and his playing suffers from lack of practice. He becomes angry at himself and at the world, and his mother becomes angry at him—perhaps because she sees in him the career that she gave up when she got married and decided to have a family.

Micah continues to play concerts, but he rides on his past talent, though his admirers continue to flock to his side to provide him surface satisfaction.

David Stirling sees all this happening, but because he is Micah’s roommate on enough occasions, he sees other aspects of Micah. He has fallen in love with Micah, and on one occasion kisses him in their hotel room. Micah rebels, because he doesn’t feel the same about David, but there is something about David’s kiss that is appealing.

Micah’s life continues to deteriorate—he stays out overnight with friends, has a relationship with a fellow student, etc.—becomes angry at the world until his parents become exasperated and decide to send him, first, to a wilderness therapy expedition, which has a temporary effect, and then to a remote school for boys with anger-management problems—a school that has heavy supervision. At the school, he rooms with Marty Newman, whose anger-management problem is due largely to being gay and in the closet.

The friendship between Micah and Marty blossoms until the point where Marty can tell Micah that he is gay. Micah is able to relate because of his brother and of Jake and Robbie. But the talks awaken in Micah feelings that he has repressed, though nothing comes of them with Marty.

Part 3 – Recovery

When Micah returns from the year away, he has matured, but he also has decided to drop his music and concentrate on basketball and studies.

After graduation, he decides to go to Walla Walla College, a religious school. There he drifts along, making reasonable grades, playing his instrument on occasion—sometimes just to make spending money. Deep down, Micah feels he has lost something, though on the surface he’s happy and “well adjusted,” and he begins to experience bouts of depression.

One day at an espresso shop in downtown Walla Walla he encounters David Stirling, who is a student at Whitman College and plays both in the college orchestra and the Walla Walla Symphony. David asks him out on a “coffee date,” then to attend a symphony performance—all of which rekindles Micah’s interest in restarting his music.

They begin seeing more of each other, and eventually Micah falls in love with David. With David’s encouragement, Micah reenters the world of performance, and in a short time regains his earlier skills. The two young men become lovers on their way to becoming life mates.

At some point, Micah must face his family with his choice of mate. The decision is brought on, perhaps, by a suicide of Marty Newman after being rejected by his family and having to live on the streets [?]. Micah realizes that he must face up to who and what he is, so he brings David to the Palouse farm. The tension between Micah and his mother is palpable, though his father is more tolerant. At some point over the stay, David and Betty have a tense talk in which David gives Betty the choice—if Micah is separated from David there probably would not be a career in music, but with David, Micah will have with the musical career that Betty wants for him and had to forsake for herself. Betty accepts the latter, bitterly, but she grows to accept David.

Micah’s career takes off. At some time, Jake and Robbie buy an Amati violin (or high-class other instrument) worth over a million dollars and present it to Micah. Micah will not accept it as a gift, but agrees to buy it from them.

David and Micah become life mates and successful in their careers.

Snippets

I play Bach; you are the messenger of Bach.