Outskirts Press, INC.

Money A Novel parallels the lives of two young men, illegitimate Marty Price and rich Moses Lackey, whose families, respectively, represent sacrifice and greed. Ostracized by many, the boys become constant companions until graduation when Marty enlists in the Army and is sent to Korea while Moses enters the University of South Carolina. After being gang raped, Marty asks to be transferred. He is wounded in battle. At college, Moses reluctantly engages in a liaison with an Olympia millworker’s daughter. Marty returns home to Britton’s Neck broken and surly. Moses returns to open a medical practice. On her deathbed, Marty’s mother discloses the identity of his father whom Marty vows to avenge. Instead, Marty discovers he has a half-brother, and they start spending time together. Together they help save Moses from losing his fortune and his life. They discover Moses’ family secrets. Moses’ mother, the daughter of a prominent South Carolina politician, was once passionately loved and sought after by more than one member of the Lackey family.

War was building up. After July 1950 and the news that Communist troops from the north had plowed into the southern region of Korea, the United Nations, in its very early years, felt a responsibility to act. Here it was that Northern Korea was bullying, and a country cannot do that and get away with it. But the Communists didn’t listen and didn’t say, “Oh, we didn’t know. Please excuse us. It won’t happen again.” No. They ignored the polite talks. The polite talks turned into commands that had to be backed up. North Korea didn’t listen at all but kept on taking over. Sixteen of the countries that had elected to join in the project to unite the nations sent in their young men soldiers. About forty-one countries sent supplies and food. The United States sent thousands of its young men soldiers to help defend the country and millions of dollars for the families of the civilians from South Korea who had already been killed. Japan had controlled Korea since 1895, but after World War II—1939 until 1945—in fact, Russia had occupied North Korea. Ironically, the United Nations was organized in the fall of the year the war ended (October of 1945), by a group of countries that opposed Germany, Japan, and Italy. These countries had sent representatives to San Francisco in April of 1945 to plan this organization. Fifty nations signed on to the ideal to wipe out war forever. They used the Bible verse that said, “Let us beat swords into plowshares,” from Isaiah 2:4, which says “He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore” (ESV) to express the ideal of world peace and human dignity. It would have been well for the founders to include the next verse, “O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord” (Isaiah 2:5, ESV). The second irony was that the Russians made a gift, a statue by their great sculptor, Yevgeny Vuchetich, which depicted this grand notion. The artwork was placed at the United Nations headquarters in New York City. High-sounding verbiage and power to mere men, but can mere mortals achieve such peace? History quickly reveals men in their own power cannot. But man is bent on power. Man has the desire to become like God since only God really has ultimate power. Man is in a state of constant erosion by the diseases of greed, lust, luxury, all borne from the germ of power, a virus that will only be controlled, never eradicated, by the transfer of knowledge that there is only one non-tarnishing, non-decaying, non-weakening power, and that is God. And all the higher rationalization of man will never change that fact. God is God and man is man. People who know the Bible hold to the knowledge that God sent Jesus in the form of man once and once only for a special purpose, to save mankind from the sin he, man, had created in the first garden home of Eden. The job being done, Jesus crucified to redeem mankind, he ascended to heaven and would never have to become like man again. But, an important notion to keep in mind is this: Man would never become God. Neither is man a little God. But Satan, who was a darling to God while in heaven, tried to prove he was as good as God, and got himself kicked out of heaven, he and his little demons. Since then, they wander the earth creating war in big places of prominence and little places of no-account. And still, anywhere he can get a toehold, Satan is there in disguise to tear down, to thwart, to contort, to ruin, and to bring death.