DEAR HEARTS AND GENTLE PEOPLE From the FOREWORD: This is not a novel. Every scene and incident in this book actually took place, although recounted to the extent that memory, notes, and records allow. The people in the story are real people, some of whom you may already know. In some cases their names have been changed to protect them, or me. This book could be called a micro history centered around my experience of the times' major and minor events. I let the story tell itself. The events told are those of normal, everyday life as it occurs to the author, which is why there is so much small stuff, set against a cosmic background of intriguing information. Hopefully, the grand ideas, that are also the living characters delineated herein, eventually take the day.

The grand ideas of the book are the great happenings of history, such as the presence of extraterrestrials, or the great changes in religion that are on our doorstep now. It is a love story too--and maybe you know something about that, but it is also an expose of the institutions in the story. The basic question about a life's meaning, mine and therefore yours, is brought out right away in the Prelude. As in reality, the individual themes of the book are tied together in that unity that makes everything at last a sound and encouraging story. K. A.W.