"A person often finds his destiny on the road he took to avoid it."--Jean de la Fontaine Time and Lies and Stranger Things/Requiem for a Loser follows the travails, adventures, and misadventures of small-town Arkansan, Haskell Montana. This lighthearted drama follows Haskell through the 1960's to mid-'90's. Early on, he starts to believe that life has dealt him a crappy hand; true enough, he's visited by more injustice and personal tragedy than should be allowed. Stability, love and happiness, and peace of mind are slippery slopes; he can't seem to get any traction. Worst of all, he carries the burden of a deep, dark, secret; a haunting enigma that, he fears, could upend his life. Personal shame, guilt, and fear gnaw at his gut like a hungry rat. But he masks it well; God only knows how he keeps his sense of humor. There'll come a time that he decides to scuttle it all. He padlocks his shack in the woods, climbs on his big two-wheeler, and, with the morning sun on the back of his neck, puts the hammer down. He makes a run for his life from his life. He tries to outrun the past, but the past is exactly where the future takes him.

When an encounter with a road-weathered, old-school biker in eastern Oklahoma's Kiamichi Mountains moves the hand of fate, he'll have a reckoning with his dogged past and find surprising answers to long unsettled mysteries. Because, out there on the interlacing backroads that wind across the hidden landscapes of lost yesterdays, lies can't abide the light of the invariable truth.

Author C.O. Ruby remains somewhere in the wilds of the Ouachita Mountain range, a comfortable distance from the thundering herd, not far from where the Ozarks begin their steady climb out of the Arkansas River valley.

Note: This book is for mature readers.