Back to Willow Pond

By: Diane Ganzer Baum

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

"Me 'n you against the world, Ma," Ritchie always reminded his mother when she tucked him into bed at night. He needed his Ma now, more than ever, and she was no longer there for him. Slowly, as the days went by, his young heart grew even more hardened. Then came the day when he was accused of murder and had to do time at a boys' home called Willow Pond. The lessons he learned there proved that he had much to give, yet needed to give up a lot more to prove himself a worthy person. Unfortunately, the relentless lure of a wild life that included drinking were too much of a strain on his young marriage, arranged for all the wrong reasons. His wife leaves him, taking their two young children with her. Continuing to live a wild and carefree existence, Ritchie loses everything and everyone that ever meant anything to him, including the one person who was willing to give him extra chances. Alone and desperate, he returns to the one place that had ever given him solace, only to find that it too, was abandoned. To confront the demons of the present means that he needs to go back to the past- the one that still haunts him at night. What answers lie at the end of the long gravel road, the one that takes Ritchie back to Willow Pond?