The Good Heart

Can one heart beat in three lives? Can donor heart transplants also carry memories of the prior owners? If it did, what would be the heart’s story? Whose lives could be touched? What secrets would the heart carry? And in this case, could it really reach into the highest halls of American power? Lives will change, people will die, and power will shift in THE GOOD HEART, by James Michael Pratt.

Story Line: He expected peace, but it had not come. Would God require something from him for the secret he had kept for more than 40 years? So asks powerful Senator Joseph Caine’s brother, Nicholas, pastor of First Tallahassee Congregational Church. Pastors have privileges of confession; untouchable by law, until the heart of Pastor Caine is transferred to another. In this case political consultant Mike Stone, dying from an abused heart, driven to disease through years of reckless living, receives the good heart, but also secrets hidden deeply within its walls. Now as one man dies, and another lives through the gift of a transplanted heart, recipient Mike Stone heals. Memories he was never aware of come to him in dreams and in bright flashes of recognition that have no past. As the "heart memories" become more vivid, Mike Stone begins to understand that the secret imbedded in his new heart can destroy the very person responsible for saving his life. After years of hard living, Mike has experienced a literal change of heart. Passionately in love for the first time in his life, he is desperate to survive and to redeem the recklessness of his youth. But as he follows the trail of memories encoded in the donated heart and wrestles with issues of integrity and forgiveness, someone else seems determined to make certain the secret is never revealed. Torn between his newfound values and a desire to protect his family from harm, Mike must decide if exposing the truth is worth the risk.

Set in the fast-paced, power-hungry climate of Washington, D.C., this gripping new novel combines political intrigue with passion and danger while unraveling the mystery behind a brotherly pact that threatens all in its path.

INSPIRATION FOR THE GOOD HEART

The analogy for one “good heart” having an influence for good upon countless individuals lives is the moral and premise for the story. In telling the story, The Good Heart, it is necessary to allow the reader to decide the plausibility of personality traits and “memories” of the deceased heart donor being transferred to a grateful recipient.

Pastor Caine, a heart transplant patient from the 1970’s, received a good heart of a man whose death he unintentionally helped cause during his rebellious youth of the civil rights 1960’s. “The heart is for giving and the brain is for getting,” he tells his congregation in his final address before retirement in the present day. His powerful Senator-brother is in the audience and both share the dark secrets of a blended past. A double meaning to the statement regarding heart vs. head is of course intended from Pastor Caine to brother Senator Caine in hopes the secrets they share can now become history and forgiveness reign as the motivating force for the remainder of their lives.

But, the good heart has its power and memories as well and how far that will go in revealing truth up to the end of their mortal journey is part of the stories outcome and moral.

Few readers of The Good Heart or scientific non-fiction have a problem agreeing with the power the heart muscle has over emotions, compassion, love, and kind generous responses to others. The brain is highly analytical, less emotional, and capable of compartmentalizing in such a way as to literally “forget” the needs, cares, and emotions of others. Much has been written in the sciences of heart-mind connection in the past thirty years – that the heart never lies and ultimately will convict or convert the owner to its logic and way of thinking while the brain seeks to control at all times.

The most influential source material for my story concept came from my reading of Dr. Paul Pearsall’s groundbreaking book title The Heart’s Code in which he explores the cellular memory capacity of the heart organ. His basic premise is that the heart is more than a mere mechanical pump but also a receiver and transmitter of messages and another thinking and feeling “brain” designed by nature to be used in all aspects of life.

For example, Pearsall postulates that hearts in “synchronization” can beat on opposite sides of the planet and yet transmit loving or hateful thoughts to each other, and the sensitivity of such messages can cause euphoria and “loving” emotions or depressing and hateful emotions to the receiving heart. Such emotions may bolster or weigh down upon the bodies immune system, and ultimately the health for good or bad of those who harmonize with other hearts. Dr. Pearsall further postulates that these ethereal messages of one heart to another affect the health, outlook, and actions of the individual receiving a transplanted heart.

“He has a cold heart” is much more likely to be heard than, “He has a cold brain.” “The love in that woman’s heart was felt by everyone she ever knew,” one eulogized of a relative. It is hard to imagine someone eulogizing with this statement: “She loved everyone with all her brain.”

Those who live solely by the brain as their decision making center fail to love “with all their hearts” and by nature lose the wonder and splendor that a heart centered person experiences. It may be no accident, postulates Pearsall and others in the scientific community, that the heart is literally seated at the center of the human being’s soul for a divinely appointed purpose. New discoveries in connection to neuron cells found in the stomach and heart creates a bold new possibility; that “gut instinct” may be more than a metaphor for using intuition as a valid process for decision making.

Coming to Paperback Spring 2009

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