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This information is provided by the author: Barry James Hickey

Title of the Novel: The Glass Fence

*The Glass Fence is a fitting title for this work. The Current Length of the Work: 106,000 words

Market/Demographic Focus: Adult Fiction/Suspense, Romance, Women's Issues

Logline: Against all odds, Katie Jones decides to get her life back by starting a rowing team with a handful of disillusioned women working at a luxury hotel.

Critique: The story moves along at a very good pace. Dialogue is brisk and at times quite humorous, as one would expect from characters locking horns at a resort hotel. The author has a very good visual style and has done his research on the mechanics of hotel management and the art of rowing. The plot moves along seamlessly with some surprising but well-executed believable turns. There is a nice message in here about friendship and marriage. *Highly recommend.

They have been living in San Diego for a year, but Katie and Wade Jones still haven't made any real friends. They have been too absorbed in their relationship, her work, and his job search. After she has a miscarriage and Wade takes a traveling job as a fundraiser, Katie realizes she has lost her personal ambition. Her job as Human Resources Manager at the fabulous Windamere Hotel and Resort on the shores of Mission Bay is high drama and comic opera. She seems surrounded by madcap characters. Simon Simples, her secretive, paranoid and socially challenged General Manager has an "avoid and conquer" management style and a secret moneymaking scheme. Her Mormon assistant Tina is dyslexic and ponders why she came to California on the back of a Harley. Divorced and bitchy Barb in Catering is sarcastic and acid-tongued. Angela in Reservations, a fading beauty, measures love from one-night stands. Gay chefs Harvey Prudhomme and Paul Smith fight over kitchen territory. A handful of green card employees conspire for a Hispanic revolution. Poor Eddie the teenage valet desperately wants to lose his virginity. Sofie the waitress wants to kill her common law husband when he gets out of prison. Misha and Juki, a pair of Korean masseuses, do whatever Spa Manager Annabelle Lee tells them to do. Reinvigorated Katie finds herself inspired by the rowing crews she sees on Mission Bay. She proposes a hotel rowing team to Simon Simples to boost company morale. It's accepted. But when she posts the results of team tryouts, Simon Simples withdraws financial support. It turns out, he is a racist. Determined not to quit, Katie finds a boat and a dock and forms a private crew from the rank and file of disenchanted women she works with. Rowing is a team sport and in practice, Katie changes the hearts and minds of her ethnically challenged crew, not an easy task since they dislike each other at first. To further disrupt their lives, Mr. Simples conspires to fire her hotel teammates, one by one. Now Katie has three obstacles ahead of her: Get Mr. Simples removed from power, get her team to work as one, and learn to relinquish her guilt and anger from the miscarriage so she and her husband can grow their marriage. With Angela and Barb, Katie hides cameras near hotel cash registers and catches the General Manager stealing small amounts of money from them in the wee hours of the night. Late, after she secretly tails him to a rest home, Katie discovers that her boss has a wife named Lilith who is paralyzed and unable to speak. An old

photograph by her bedside reveals that Simon Simples is not who he says he is. Katie digs deeper and discovers that her boss (with the help of his sister) has assumed the identity of a dead man to bilk hundreds of thousands of dollars from the hotel's remodeling projects. Money he hopes to use someday for a miraculous surgery to restore his wife's voice. After asking her husband Wade what he would do if Katie was the paralyzed victim, she realizes her retribution is outweighed by empathy and gives Mr. Simples a chance to slip out of town with his wife before she goes to the police. At story's end, Katie and her new team challenge another rowing team to a head race on Mission Bay and finally feel the thrill of being winners in their lives again.

Main Character: Katie Jones, early thirties, faithfully married to her traveling husband. Worried and distracted after her first miscarriage, she reinvents herself by putting together a rowing team against all odds.

Supporting Characters:

Simon Simples: Late fifties. Paranoid and secretive, this General Manager of the Windamere Resort Hotel hides his mysterious past and punishes his staff for it.

Wade Jones: Mid-thirties. Katie's faithful husband. He too mourns the miscarriage as he takes a new job requiring travel as he sustains the bonds of his marriage.

Sofie: Late twenties. A black waitress raising two kids, helplessly waiting for her maniac husband to be freed from prison.

Tina Austin: Early twenties. A naive Mormon girl trying to unravel her relationship to a controlling, unemployed biker.

Angela Spencer: Late thirties. A smart aleck former beauty queen tired of her promiscuous past.

Harvey Prudhomme: Mid-forties. Executive Chef of the Windamere Hotel, he fancies the day his culinary acumen will be noticed again.