David Morpheys

Prodigal Time, 1969 David Morpheys

Three people's lives interplay for love, for protest, and for family. Caught in the conflicted end of the Sixties, they pursue a life worth living. David Morpheys comes to Wells College to study enough French to live in Canada and meets Kady Bontecott off to a semester in France. That month they fall in love separated till summer in Paris. Kurt Kallini looks after Kady for her father's sake. Father and son connect through Bontecott Stone and the import of diamonds and dust. Kallini stands at the center that won't hold in the radical movement. At Cornell, the Movement takes over the university. Then in protest of an expanded war, five hundred colleges shut down and 100,000 protesters march on Washington in the culmination and last gasp of student protest. Over the course and fullness of a prodigal time, 1969, the three experience the end of the Sixties revolution, the beginning of the underground and GI Resistance, and travel in exile from the draft and its inclusion of youth in the distant and ever-present War in Vietnam. Kady and David travel Europe, work in France, come home for a wedding in Hudson Park, NY and a funeral in Dalhart, Texas, travel to California where Kady's sure she's pregnant, return to Woodstock, work a Freres' vacation in Vichy, France, where Kurt Kallini comes between the two of them. Now Kurt knows he's his father's bastard son and Bontecott refuses him the business. In spite, Kallini advises Kady to have her abortion. Ultimately Kurt Kallini prepares to bring into the states the motherload of diamonds and dust, to bankrupt and buy out his father's business of Bontecott Stones and fund the GI Resistance Movement. David returns from a walled-in Berlin to Kady working for Les Freres. They tell each other truths they can't bear to hear. The love they shared like the prodigal time of the Sixties runs out. Kady goes home to take care of her mom, while David retreats to Munich to write his college thesis. There Kurt Kallini offers big money if David