Beyond the Pale

The predictability of the human spirit can be measured, but only to a certain degree. Injustices will be tolerated. Abuses will be excused. As history teaches, efforts to adapt will be made. But are there limits as to how much will be endured? Just as one walks by a sleeping dog—perhaps ten feet away, eight, maybe six—nothing happens. But to pass just a fraction closer—that one additional foot, or even an inch—at some distance the dog will allow no more. Just as with the dog, when a human injustice goes beyond the pale—be the victim a single person or a nation—then predictability becomes as meaningless as a melted iceberg. Beyond the Pale looks at an ordinary man who holds the tobacco industry accountable for his wife’s inoperable cancer and subsequent death. After a suicidal year plagued with guilt and despair, a champion emerges. Morality is a luxury forgone. He becomes as the industry has become—cold, calculating, and indifferent. His rules govern the war—not a war fought in the courts or in the Congress—but real war, a war of death, treachery, and betrayal. The battlefields are his choosing—no quarter expected and none given. Years of political manipulation, legal bullying, and financial intimidation created a monster. Now the monster must die.