What's in a title? Probably not everyone would connect my novel The Merry Life of Charles Parker with Hemingway's story "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber." But the truth is, I can't help doffing my hat to Hemingway. Here is a story about courage and about a short happy life. And hunting. Chuck Parker figures he has no shortage of courage, and I see no reason to doubt him. Would he love to go hunting for big game in Africa? You bet! African hunting does make an appearance in the novel and one of the crucial events in the plot involves hunting. Connected to both hunting and merriness is The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. It's all a bunch of yuks until Thud! you're dead. OK, maybe not thud, but this does circle us back around to what is a happy life? What is the meaning of life? In all events, Robin Hood gets his share of allusions in my novel.

Merry also can't be separated from Christmas in American culture. Much of the novel is set around Christmastime, 1958. So, when I got the idea for the title of the novel -- it came in a flash, about the only aspect of the novel that did come in a flash -- I knew it would conjure comparisons to "It's a Wonderful Life." This does allow us to raise questions of what a good life is. What is the summum bonum? How ought we to live? This is never directly addressed in the novel but the implication is always there. Chuck is trying to live right. He is trying to outlive the shame that haunts him. Shame itself rises from society's desire to impose certain limits, to enforce a set of conventions. From even before he is birth, Chuck is living under a curse.