Orvil: Trial and Error

Orvil sits alone in a diner to celebrate his 21^st birthday. He feels lonely and abandoned...his new girlfriend just dumped him and his mother recently died. He has no idea who his father is. He hates his first name, lives in a rundown trailer, had sacrificed his studies at City College to care for his ailing parent, and drives trucks just to scrape by. Totally lost since his mother’s death, his free time revolves around eating junk food and chugging beers in front of the tube. As he’s feeling sorry for himself, he perceives a gunman entering the diner and firing his AR-15 at everyone in sight. This experience forever changes Orvil’s life. Powerful and insightful, humourous and tragic, through trial and error, Orvil Smith’s story takes us on a tour of modern America from the rural to the urban, from the poor to the rich, and from the righteous to the corrupt.

Deborah de Camaret has lived half of her adult life in California, and the other half in France. A lover of travel, she has toured the US, Canada, Mexico, South America, Europe, Southeast Asia, and India. Her Master’s degrees in French literature and psychology led to careers in teaching foreign language and psychology and exercising psychotherapy in hospitals, clinics, and in private practice. Since childhood, she has been writing almost daily: diaries, letters, poetry, and short stories, not to mention university thesis, and finally a novel. Orvil: Trial and Error is a culmination in the form of fiction of her rich personal and professional life, her fascination and interaction with people of all walks of life, her political views, her reverence for nature, and most of all, her love of language.