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Country tune echoes book’s second chance to get it right in ‘Live Like You Were Dying’
Second chances are rare. Some seize the moment. Others, out of fear, let it pass.
Nathan Bishop is a man at the crossroads of his life.
In his third and latest work, “Live Like You Were Dying,” writer Michael Morris introduces us to Nathan Bishop, a man on the move. Obsessed with managing every precise detail of his career, Nathan lives his life climbing the corporate ladder. Yet the remainder of his life is a blur. Morris writes, “The smell of money turned out to be an axis between my soul and my family.”
So committed to the job, Nathan is always missing out on those little family happenings. Choosing work over his daughter, Malley’s kindergarten graduation and her gymnastics events, Nathan’s life eventually takes a traumatic turn. An accident one night at the plant leaves him fighting for his life. His lungs filled with blood, he soon finds himself counting ceiling tiles in the hospital.
 | | Live Like You Were Dying
Westbow Press
2004
ISBN # 1-5955-4025-3
$16.99
hardcover
pages: 178
word count: 713
by: Elisabeth A. Doehring |
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A mysterious spot is subsequently detected on his lung. Diagnoses and possible treatments are sketchy at best, and Nathan is eventually released by the doctors. A frightened man, he is faced with the choice of either going back to his previous workaholic existence or taking on the uncertainty of a new order in life.
 | | (l to r) Michael Morris, songwriter Craig Wiseman, Tim McGraw, and songwriter Tim Nichols. The photo was taken at a party in Nashville celebrating the song's number one slot on Billboard. |
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Still weak, Nathan drives himself back to work. Twenty years at the paper mill has bought him self-perceived job security. However, as he pulls into the lot, Nathan discovers that a young Georgia Tech engineering grad has already laid claim to his special parking space. Upon entering his old office, Nathan finds Brad Livingston sitting in his chair, his boots propped up on the desk. When Brad proceeds to offer him a simple millwright opening, Nathan loses it.
Shaken, Nathan returns home to his manicured lawn in suburbia Atlanta and begins to feel an inner voice calling him back to his rural upbringing in Choctaw, Georgia. Picking daisies, disco dancing with his daughter, and courting his wife with a wheelbarrow full of black-eyed Susans consume whatever time is destined to be his final days.
Packing up the family, Nathan heads back to his roots. His maternal grandmother, Grand Vestal, is waiting on the porch as the family pulls up. Yet, with going home, Nathan is forced to come to terms with not only the fears surrounding his mother’s untimely death but an even worse trepidation—facing the lifelong nonexistent relationship with his angry and noncommunicative father.
The world begins to slow down to a moment-by-moment trickle as Nathan and his father take young Malley fishing at Brouser’s Pond. Instead of looking for a corporate paycheck loaded with zeros at the fishing hole, Nathan pulls out a simple dollar and tucks the bill into an old coffee can hanging by a rusted nail from a pine tree. This scene is rich with the fluidity of language that Morris is so known for.
Through Nathan’s grandmother, Grand Vestal, Morris creates a well-developed character. His clear polished prose and whispers to the senses shine through in such lines as, “Grand Vestal opened up the box, and the smell of aged cedar flowed through the living room.”
After two weeks in Choctaw, Nathan reluctantly agrees to a tiring journey with his father; a man who he has always felt was dead in both body and spirit. The two men hitch a camper to the back of a rundown pickup and ride off on a winding cross country trip. From stopping for meatloaf at a Birmingham diner to a rodeo in Oklahoma City to an aerial adventure in New Mexico to their sighting of the Grand Canyon, narrative tension between father and son builds as the actual meaning of life and relationships are revealed.
True to every one of songwriters Tim Nichols and Craig Wiseman lyrics and Tim McGraw’s blockbuster recording, “Live Like You Were Dying,” Morris takes the reader to a place of second chances were real living occurs. From a small press and a small book comes a powerful story.
Live Like You Were Dying is poignant, humorous, and a smooth read. Alabama-based author Michael Morris gets the voices just right. This novella is prolific in both story and setting. Exhilarating and refreshing from beginning to end, this book hits nothing but high notes. Exceptionally done.
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