Little Lower Than Angels

LOWER THAN THE ANGELS The story concerns the lives of two young people. Rose Gilchrist (christened Primrose Gilleland, which name she changes as soon as she is old enough) is the daughter of a wealthy, Pennsylvanian mining magnate. Her mother left home when was a baby and her father has raised her. Like her mother, Rose has no interest in the wealth. She is a top student at school and goes to Penn State where she graduates as a doctor. After her internship, she volunteers with Médecins Sans Frontières and is posted to Haiti. While working at the Hinche Clinic, she becomes the prisoner of a mountain brigand. David Fitzgerald is brought up in the Bronx by his grandparents. He is at the head of an adolescent gang and spends time in Juvenile detention on a few occasions. When he is 18, he is brought before a judge on the charge of assault. The judge is observant and knows that David has been responsibly raised. When the case is proved, the judge gives David a choice; go to jail for three years or enlist in the armed forces. He joins up and it changes his life. He becomes a marine and after three years, is offered officer training at Quantico. At the conclusion of another three years he is a second lieutenant and is asked to volunteer for a secretive force who have been formed ostensibly to rescue volunteer aid workers in war zones. During the severe training, he is put at the head of a seven man team. David rescues Rose twice; in Haiti and then in Rwanda during the civil war. They fall in love but life gets in their way and they lose touch for many years. After 9 / 11, Rose goes into the American heartland, searching for her mother and a twist of fate sees the young couple meeting up after a decade. For years, David has been on the run through the mid-west after deserting when he realised the group were fed false information. The training was not to produce rescuers but assassins and David can’t be a party to such extreme measures. Even after a decade, he is still being hunted and the final confrontation takes place on the Gilleland estate.