Ithaca: The Long Road Home

Ithaca is Stephen Pearsall’s third novel in the Norquist trilogy and portrays with insight and sensitivity Kyle Norquist’s journey from childhood to his election as a US Senator. It is the story of war and adventure, intense relationships and perfect love, greed, malice and murder. The beginning of handgun proliferation in the United States and the world’s appetite for weapons becomes a center-focus for two Senators who met on the Stanford University campus. One became the principal proponent of handgun regulation, and the other exposed a conspiracy to illegally ship weapons to nefarious foreign clients. The story argues that we can never entirely fathom another person’s deepest thoughts, not our family’s nor our friends’ and that a father and son’s relationship may be the most challenging. The conclusion gathers characters from the three novels and examines their philosophies and reveals their surprising judgements on their own life and that of their family.