THE NINTH PASSAGE: SYNOPSIS
In the early 1950’s a thirty-seven-year-old WWII vet becomes the high school music teacher in a small Florida coastal town where he initiates a romantic relationship with a seventeen-year-old student in his choir. Inspired by actual events the story traces their tragic relationship over a nine-year period.
Set in a small coastal town during the 1950’s when the State stood poised on the verge of rapid development that transformed sleepy fishing and citrus villages into developers’ fantasies faster than the community mores and attitudes could keep pace. Home for a class reunion, Dean Collins recounts to his new younger bride the story of Alec Driver, a WWII veteran Ivy League graduate and Connecticut Yankee who arrived fifty years earlier as part of an advance wave of Northeastern and Midwestern migrants that would soon engulf the Florida peninsula.
No ordinary migrant, Alec receives an appointment as the music teacher at the local high school and sojourns to Florida on foot. Strangers are not yet the norm in small Florida towns and Alec becomes conspicuous immediately upon his arrival. Apart from his mode of transportation, he further distinguishes himself by falling in love with Tracy Ashbury, the town’s princess, an attractive, talented and intelligent student twenty years his junior. Upset by this flagrant act of defiance of community norms, town citizens are enraged further when he strikes a jealous and resentful student with his fist.
Alec, on the brink of losing his hard-won position, salvages his career and amorous plans with his musical and orchestral talent. The performance of his choirs saves his job by impressing the community’s musically inclined citizens. His fortunes continue to improve through his marriage to Tracy and the receipt of national awards for music education and direction including a stirring performance, with a full symphony orchestra, of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
Ultimately, his intransigence and utter disregard for the feelings of others leads to misfortune as Tracy, now a mother, wrestles control of her life from him. Despondent, Alec turns to alcohol and evinces symptoms of manic depression until suddenly he appears to recover. The apparent recovery was only a ruse as he snubs the community by committing suicide and leaving a caustic note implicating the community’s unwillingness to accept the life he sought.
THE NINTH PASSAGE By Dale O Cloninger
THE NINTH PASSAGE: SYNOPSIS
In the early 1950’s a thirty-seven-year-old WWII vet becomes the high school music teacher in a small Florida coastal town where he initiates a romantic relationship with a seventeen-year-old student in his choir. Inspired by actual events the story traces their tragic relationship over a nine-year period.
Set in a small coastal town during the 1950’s when the State stood poised on the verge of rapid development that transformed sleepy fishing and citrus villages into developers’ fantasies faster than the community mores and attitudes could keep pace. Home for a class reunion, Dean Collins recounts to his new younger bride the story of Alec Driver, a WWII veteran Ivy League graduate and Connecticut Yankee who arrived fifty years earlier as part of an advance wave of Northeastern and Midwestern migrants that would soon engulf the Florida peninsula.
No ordinary migrant, Alec receives an appointment as the music teacher at the local high school and sojourns to Florida on foot. Strangers are not yet the norm in small Florida towns and Alec becomes conspicuous immediately upon his arrival. Apart from his mode of transportation, he further distinguishes himself by falling in love with Tracy Ashbury, the town’s princess, an attractive, talented and intelligent student twenty years his junior. Upset by this flagrant act of defiance of community norms, town citizens are enraged further when he strikes a jealous and resentful student with his fist.
Alec, on the brink of losing his hard-won position, salvages his career and amorous plans with his musical and orchestral talent. The performance of his choirs saves his job by impressing the community’s musically inclined citizens. His fortunes continue to improve through his marriage to Tracy and the receipt of national awards for music education and direction including a stirring performance, with a full symphony orchestra, of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
Ultimately, his intransigence and utter disregard for the feelings of others leads to misfortune as Tracy, now a mother, wrestles control of her life from him. Despondent, Alec turns to alcohol and evinces symptoms of manic depression until suddenly he appears to recover. The apparent recovery was only a ruse as he snubs the community by committing suicide and leaving a caustic note implicating the community’s unwillingness to accept the life he sought.
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