The King Who Made Paper Flowers

About this book

When Arthur Benjamin steps from a Greyhound bus in Savannah Georgia he is immediately robbed by an affable street magician named Hamby Cahill. It is Hambys first act of thievery and the remorse of it so overwhelms him that he finds lodging for Arthur in The Castle a warehouse supposedly owned by Melinda McFadden an eccentric and fragile grande dame of imagined aristocracy who is known as Lady to the strange assembly of street people she has arbitrarily selected to be her Guests. There Arthur finds his family--an ex-con shoplifter a disgruntled seamstress a young artist suspected of being a hooker and a former boxer known as Lightning. For Arthur it is the company that will change his life as he in turn will change the lives of everyone he encounters. Yet he does not know he will become entangled with political arrogance over a minor traffic mishap or be targeted for brutality. He does not know he will encounter Wally Whitmire proponent of the Destiny of the Dominoes or that he will become an unqualified mayoral candidate put forth to serve as an irritant to the incumbent Harry Geiger. And he does not know he will be looked upon by the people of Savannah--fortunate and unfortunate alike--as an icon a beloved figure who wears a cape of invented royalty and distributes paper flowers made of cocktail napkins as gifts of comfort. Arthur knows only that he has found his place and his purpose.