That Good Night

Book excerpt: Condemned to spend his “Golden Years” cooped up in Sunset Nursing Home, 84-year-old Charlie Lambert refuses this ending for himself. With the help of an old sailing buddy living in Maine, Charlie plans to go AWOL permanently, buy a boat, and hit the high seas, where he will live out the remainder of his life on his own terms. Nothing ever goes quite as planned, though, and as Charlie heads towards Maine on a 46-foot sailboat, he strikes up an unexpected romance with Abigail, a woman decades his junior. Things take a darker turn, though, when he discovers a former FBI agent-turned-insurance-investigator hot on his trail. Agent Roberts has been hired to find out what happened to Charlie: bring him back if he’s alive, or determine he’s dead so his estranged sons can collect on his life insurance policy. Roberts doesn’t expect a fight from the old man, but that’s just what he gets. Because Charlie has no intention of ever returning to Sunset, whether in handcuffs or a pine box. Funny, heart-warming, and heart-breaking, That Good Night tells the story of a man who, rather than rail against going “gentle into that good night,” as Dylan Thomas wrote, instead wishes to simply sail into a sunset of his own choosing.