The wedding was weeks away for two young lovers, who had counted themselves lucky to
have found one another. Then, it was over, as one of them abruptly disappeared. Audrey was not abducted. Not exactly. She was not taken against her will. Rather, her will itself had been taken. Coerced and controlled. Deceived and derailed. Matthias cannot walk away from the catastrophe, though he has nothing to go on, and is in the dark beyond all personal darkness he has ever known.

Audrey and Matthias are from the workaday, real world. Memorable but not flamboyant
characters, their love story has a special poignancy. These are people you may know. And they are in deepest trouble.

The Contraption is a literary thriller dealing with people ensnared in a dangerous, destructive
religious cult, but not another exercise in sensationalism and mythologizing, as far too many
novels on this subject have been. My book is one that delivers the realities faced by those lured into cults – and their loved ones. The title comes from my analogy of mind control as a faulty, buggy, man-made machine, inserted by way of deception into the workings of a healthy psyche. I show it happening.

I’ve been a student of the cult phenomenon for decades. I have read all the major scholarly
works and many memoirs of former members. I make no claim of being an expert, but I know my subject well.

Excerpts from The Contraption . . .

“Prindibin was having some trouble exhaling. Waves of tiny spheres in rows and columns
filled her mind like organized champagne bubbles. The presence of conscious entities of
indescribable profundity surrounded her, intangible, invisible, but radiating and imbuing her
heart with their love-beyond-love. Time was flowing differently now. It was like a slow-motion,
high-definition movie, with every nanosecond imprinting distinctly on her consciousness. She
felt she would be able to clearly grasp this moment in her memory from now on. Every moment
of her life from now on would be in the new, crisp, bright, fine, ascendant mind. She was reborn, in a fully superior state.”

  “As they walked toward an expansive pond, Craig asked Matt to elaborate on the circumstances of Audrey’s departure. He responded that it was the most outrageous, inexplicable turn of events of his life. Apparently, she was drugged and abducted, but the cops didn’t seem to allow for that. Craig cryptically said, “No cops are going to help you.”

     Matt gave him the details of the bed sheets pinned up all over the room. Moultrie nodded, and interjected, “Snow white sheets only. No flower prints. No little sailboats.” Surprised, Matt acknowledged it, and mentioned the white scissors and shavers on the floor, and the glass bowl containing Audrey’s sheared-off hair. They discussed the scene in her bedroom until they arrived at the pond, and stood, arms folded, looking out across it. 

     Craig asked, “… Have you ever heard of something called Mountain of Radiance?”

     Matt thought about it and said no, but something in the tone of the man’s voice, and even the words themselves, pierced him.”