Author Description

Sam Evinston, 47, real estate broker and Vietnam veteran, apparently makes a successful recovery from lung cancer surgery. However, knowing that the cancer could possibly return, gives him a feeling that time may be running out, a feeling he had experienced often during his combat tour in Vietnam many years before. As a result he makes an extremely difficult decision to divorce his wife, Jean, to whom he has been married for more than 24 years, to free him to find Sharron Casey, a beautiful Australian girl he had met and fallen in love with during two brief weeks in Sydney, Australia, while on leave from the war in Vietnam. They had planned to marry when his tour was finished, but after returning to Vietnam he had never heard from her again though he continued to write to her. Upon leaving the army, he returned to his hometown in Iowa. After several unsuccessful attempts to contact her by phone he considered flying to Sydney to try to locate her. However, he finally decided that perhaps it was best if he tried to put it behind him and go on with his life without her. It might have been different if he had not met Jean, an attractive brunet home from the state univesrsity for the summer. After spending the summer with her and believing that his feelings for Sharron were over, he married Jean and they moved to Florida where their son, Mark, was born. But over the years, despite a reasonably good, though sometimes uninteresting marriage, Sam had never forgotten the beautiful Australian girl he had loved so passionately nearly 25 years before. During his recovery from the cancer operation, the desire to see Sharron again grew ever stronger. Even though he realizes that if she was alive she would probably have a husband and family and that there could be nothing for them at this point in their lives, he is determined to find out what happened to her and why he had never heard from her after he left Sydney. After filing divorce papers, since he