Viable Options 1: Wretched Life Choices Can Lead to "Amazing Grace!"

VIABLE OPTIONS

A good woman’s bad choices bleed into the lives of her children,
causing one to pawn his Dream to pay the cost of her Redemption

Lisa Santiago’s faith was the bedrock that anchored her life. It was a good life. She felt rich in all the intangibles sacred to marriage – love, faithfulness and trust. But when her husband Mickey dishonored her trust, the wellspring of Lisa’s faith dried up and her anchor became a weightless appendage. Lisa’s free-Fall into perdition was witnessed by everybody, including her three children. Her Fall was deliberate … premeditated. The choices she made created a debt she could never repay. Lisa’s tragic choices forced her son Manny to put his Dream on hold to help her find a way back to the woman and life she forfeited.

Manny had one Dream. It was three dimensional and full of promise. In the Dream, he saw himself graduating first in his class at Columbia University and achieving financial freedom as a Wall Street broker. He would become the first Black Mexican-American cross between William Buffet and Bill Gates.

But before the Dream kicked in, Manny’s world fractured into tiny bits of crystal debris. The father he idolized abandoned the family, the mother he adored was addicted to heroin, and parental responsibility for his younger brother and sister weighed heavily on his shoulders. Manny felt trapped and soon realized he lacked the skills and resources to save his mother and protect his siblings.

When Opportunity knocked Manny opened the door wide. Carlos Emanuel Zapa walked in and offered him a shiny short-term solution to all his problems. Manny took that option and fully embraced the life he once swore he would rather die than live.

In order to survive in Zapa’s world, Manny became the Great Pretender – a highly successful Entrepreneur, family Guardian and faithful Lover. Behind this public persona, however, he was a highly successful illicit drug distributor whose clientele paid him handsomely to protect their identity. To appease his conscience, Manny adopted the credo, “The End justifies the Means – and the Means are necessary in the End.”

Manny eventually grew weary of living in a fractured world, even one as lucrative as Zapa’s. But when he looked for an Exist, there were no viable options to unlock the Door. In desperation, he turned to three former Black Panthers and a Wall Street insider who quickly became prominent figures in his life. Another man, a world apart from the four, doggedly pressed Manny to “Pay Attention!” to his life. With help from these men, Manny found the Key – to exist Zapa’s world. But before he could execute his plan, the unthinkable happened.

Viable Options is a novel set in New York City where ethnic groups converge, co-mingle and collide … where family, friendship and trust are the stuff of Life and Death.

It is in this setting that Viable Options begs the question: “Do certain bad choices forever brand us ‘Unworthy’ of forgiveness and a chance to Begin Again?”

The impact of Lisa and Manny’s bad choices drive them both to Death’s Door. Only one survives, but each finds Redemption in the fiery circumstances of Viable Options.