The Pursuit of Happiness

I am writing the third volume of the biography of the bookseller John Heartbreak. The title of this book is John Heartbreak’s Coffee is Cold. “Cold” is a metaphor for… well, you get it.

The first volume, Coffee with John Heartbreak: A Mostly True Story of Berryville, Arkansas, focused on the East German Communist inspired architecture of the Berryville Town Square, and the chances of a serial killer finding true love therein. I am glad to say that the Berryville Town Square is undergoing significant revitalization as we speak, and pleased to think that Coffee with John inspired that renaissance.

The second volume, Semi-Faithful: More Coffee with John Heartbreak, converged on John’s and Stephen Hawking’s theories about memory as a form of time travel, and on John’s adventures with the scholar and Warrior Queen Dr. Sharon Sloan. John and Sloan travel to Withered Plum, Missouri, to fandango a crooked televangelist for the purpose of saving Normal Christianity. Semi-Faithful’s robust sales and its enthusiastic critical response (thank you, mom and Ed) compels a 3^rd and final volume.

John Heartbreak’s Coffee is Cold is that final volume. In it I will summarize Heartbreak’s experiences as a bad Catholic living in the Protestant Wonderland of the South, and describe his encounters with the wizards, mimes, magicians, and occasional saints who operate and exist within that dumbfounding space. And we’ll discover how a dour and phlegmatic Minnesotan learned to love and cope (cope cope cope) with the ebulliently self-impressed and infallible natives of Northwest Arkansas.

To make John Heartbreak’s Coffee is Cold as accurate and reflective of John Heartbreak’s life as possible, please contact me if you know John Heartbreak, know of a story that involves him, or possess images or materials such as photographs or letters. I am authorized by the Heartbreak family to use these materials and will be grateful to receive them. I will also include your experiences with John in the book itself because your story is important – and more important, because people whose name appears in a book are reliable buyers of the book. You may contact me in any way that is mutually convenient.