A novel by R.M. Dolin
Book of Isaac – TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1: Intrepid Charm – A Day in the ne’er-do-well laissez-faire life of Isaac Olinski. After his unpaid parttime shift at Murphy’s Northshore Bar, Isaac and Gabriella go out for drinks where the shallowness of their relationship is explosively exposed.
Chapter 2: Cash Flow Crisis – Isaac’s accountant, Anthony, has tried for months to warn Isaac of his cash flow crisis but it’s not until Isaac’s credit and ATM cards are frozen that Anthony gets his attention. The good news is there is a way out of the darkness, the bad news is Isaac has to cut expenses and get a job until next year’s allocation is released.
Chapter 3: You Can Quit Tomorrow – Isaac negotiates with Murphy for a paid fulltime position that evolves into a wager regarding the likelihood Gabriella leaves him once she recovers from the shock of learning he’s broke and has to work full time.
Chapter 4: Alien to My Life – Isaac settles into his world of managed expenses and fulltime work uncertain about the protocols of living a blue-collar life. His anxieties over Gabriella’s unrequited love expand as the Murphy faithful wager on Isaac’s demise; only Lenny wagers with Isaac that Gabriella won’t dump him, but he’s a romantic.
Chapter 5: The Wager Within the Wager – Ever since Isaac sent Gabriella his message asking to meet, the showdown’s building inside him like a rushing wall of water that keeps getting closer that’s all released on Lenny when he starts his shit about the real reason Uncle Darwin walked out of his life.
Chapter 6: Segue to A Life – Isaac meets Sara on an L-platform during his commute and weeks later when he learns the Murphy’s faithful have once again wagered on his love life, he conspires with Sara to turn the tables, delighted to learn she shares his same silly playfulness.
Chapter 7: The Peso Paradox – It’s four in the morning and Isaac can’t sleep as he replays key moments in his life through the filter of Lenny’s revelation. He recalls the time he was ten when Uncle Darwin took him on his first Harley ride. When they stop to eat at a back road truck stop, essential life lessons from hard men who struggle through life are shared, lessons that don’t make any more sense now than they did then.
Chapter 8: Below Rock Bottom – After struggling with the honest evidence, Isaac accepts Lenny’s versions of events concerning Uncle Darwin’s absence in his life and in that process comes to realize how much he loves Sara, which is why his world turns inside out when Sara announces she’s being transferred to Paris, and Murphy tells Isaac his Uncle Darwin is dead.
Chapter 9: C’est La Vie – With his finances in shambles, Sara leaving, and Uncle Darwin dead, Isaac struggles with the aftermath. Overcome with feelings of abandonment, betrayal, loneliness, and self-pity, the only thing keeping him together is Lenny’s insistence he go to New Mexico to deal with Uncle Darwin’s affairs.
Chapter 10: Into The Land of Mañana – Isaac arrives in New Mexico with his Chicago life behind him, what remains unknown is did he also leave the person he was back in the Windy City as he enters a new chapter in the Land of Mañana.
Chapter 11: The Destiny of Purpose – Isaac meets Camille, the one woman who could possibly teach him the power of love and how to live a purposeful life.
Chapter 12: The Art of Love – Be someone, someone wants to love.
Chapter 13: Revelation – Change is hard, knowing you need to change even harder.
Chapter 14: The Aftermath of a Life Well Lived – Isaac unravels Darwin’s journals.
Chapter 15: Marquez Mountain Redux – Darwin, Isaac, and a mountain of history.
Chapter 16: Mashings of a Mentor – The more Isaac learns about Uncle Darwin the more he understands the deeply meaningful man he was.
Chapter 17: Sunshine in Winter – Survival is itself the lesson.
Chapter 18: In The Footsteps of Giants – Outliers are the very few who can’t be manipulated or controlled by the Information Oligarchs, the last demographic of humanity that has not traded their freedom for the convenience of the information age.
Chapter 19: Where Wild Mustangs Roam – Saving his wild mustangs from decimation is Isaac’s purpose, his passion, his metaphor.
Chapter 20: The Singularity – It may be too late to save humanity from the expanding influence of Information Oligarchs, the coming AI revolution, and society’s willingness to trade freedom for convenience, but ya gotta try.
Chapter 21: Finish What You Start – The Outliers must persevere, or else. . .yikes!
Chapter 22: When Win-Win Looks Less Appealing Than Lose-Lose – Life’s replete with hard decisions.
Chapter 23: Transformation – The trans-human allure of AI and why it can’t be defeated.
Chapter 25: Walk in The Woods – Trans-humanity versus man’s need to struggle. . .do you have what it takes to keep life real?
Chapter 25: Shadow Dancers – As foretold by the Outliers via Plato’s allegory of the cave.
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