Georgetown Journeys: The Path Made Straight

By Cynthia Hearne Darling

That elite part of Washington, D.C., called Georgetown has, over the years, provided the public with glimpses of beautifully coiffed women and men with aristocratic graying hair. The press has spun intimate stories of famous Georgetowners who make clever remarks, whose words are considered as gospel - gospel, of course in the modern sense of the word. Then there are the vicarious ones who live there also, who cling to their sightings of famous people, hearing stories of parties in the next block. Their oxygen, their life blood comes from living near the power brokers. But this story is not about the pedigreed or even the hangers-on. It is about a girl, toughened up early in life, arriving in Washington with a fighting spirit, wanting to grab some safety and love before her chances are gone. It is also about her counterpart. He is a believer in the good, in God, in love. He is a seminarian who becomes an assistant in a proper Episcopal church. He wants to be a missionary. Jackie, the girl, finds a hostess job in a restaurant in Georgetown, biding her time as she looks for the man who will save her. Danny, the seminarian, lands a second job in another church in Georgetown that is falling apart, and he lands Alissa, the love of his life. Danny and Jackie slide through the era of the 1960's, with the hopes of Camelot hiding the blacker realities of a Georgetown changing to a tourist mecca, sprinkled with artistic beatniks, a death in the C&O Canal, climaxing with the riots of 1968. All the while, the lives of these two barely intersect on the streets of Wisconsin Avenue and M Street. In the coming decades they struggle to fulfill their dreams, only to find that all has eluded them. The older they get, it seems more and more impossible that their wishes will come true. As aging comes upon them, their loneliness increases as well as their alienation from the new world around them. Finally, each one ends up accidentally at the Washington Cathedral just above Georgetown. They find themselves sitting in the vast, empty nave, pouring out their hearts to each other in the midst of a driving summer thunderstorm. The next day, their names are joined in the newspaper, as the press tries to search out some relationship between the two people. Their lives are summed up in one column in the Washington Post.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1481905937
• ISBN13: 9781481905930
• Release Date: March 2013
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 210 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.0" x 0.5" x 7.0"