Jerome Francis Lusa: 13 books

Excerpt...The vagabond would not relent. The auction's host summoned a nearby policeman who took the unsteady vagabond away. Thomas was visibly shaken by the event. It wasn't until he and his wife returned to their home on a hill overlooking the town that he finally felt calm. The...

...The mountains are close to three hundred miles north of where I live. They have always beckoned when life throws me off balance. “Come find solace amid our solitude,” they call. “Come cleanse your soul on our summits.” ...

This short memoir is a homage to the trees that I have touched and that have sustained me. Please don’t call me a tree hugger, though. Yes, I have hugged trees, but it was for my sake, not theirs, and that makes all the difference. I love trees in the way that Pan troglodytes loves trees, for we...

The short story “Anybody’s Dog” tells of a boy’s goodbye to a childhood pet dog, one that he didn’t fully understood at the time. The boy’s grandfather helps ease their separation and in the process helps the boy to understand his canine friend. The setting is a long walk in the woods. When...

There was a time when circumstances of parenthood required me to fully discover and then fully display my tender side, my vulnerabilities. It was uncharted territory for a man with a somewhat simplistic male ego. So as not to lose myself, I held onto a vision that I feel defines me, the vision of entering a lion's cave. The Lion's Cave was born of that vision.

The present short story takes the form of a movie review. The movie itself is not real; it doesn’t exist. Nor does the novel on which the movie is supposedly based exist. In short, the review itself is a complete fiction.The (imagined) movie takes place among a tribe of indigenous people...

The novella “The Gamma Number” tells the discovery of a very large and very special number that can unlock universals secrets, and of the people who uncovered its wonders. The story contemplates fractal mathematics and the personalities of discovery. Gayle and Amanda, thanks for all your help. Lorem J. Fause August, 2011

The short story “Burial At Sea” tells how a woman honors her father’s wish to be buried at sea, and in doing so explores her feelings toward her father before and after his ashes are set free on the ocean’s waves. Grief works on us differently before and after the sad events in our lives, and the story honors that difference.

Oh that Love was always symmetrical, always reciprocated, always came in pairs. Alas it is not always these things, and when it is not it can spawn a most agonizing and enduring pain, that of unrequited Love. Yet like the pain that strengthens the fibers of the athlete’s muscle, like the blow of...

These are the stories from my youth that have weathered the erosion of time. Now that I have made 50 plus circuits around the sun, I feel that it is safe to put them in print. The statues of limitations have expired and the players have all grown or moved on.Many of these stories share a singular...

This story is an homage to red-tailed hawks, a majestic bird of prey that has of late flourished in the presence of human development. My interest in red-tails started during my late teens and early twenties when I commuted to and from a local university while living at my parents house. I would see...

During my late teens I was burdened by confusion about the extent of the natural world. I had a broad academic understanding of nature from my schooling, from years of reading National Geographic magazine and from several encyclopedia of nature in my parents' bookcases. Still, a myriad of facts does...

The short story “Rainy Forecast” tells the details of an unremarkable day in the unremarkable life of a young woman caught in the doldrums of her own existence. One might call it an antidote to the chirpy drama of popular culture, or perhaps just label it a very real experience that any of us might know too well.