The Second Hill
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The Second Hill examines the eternal conflicts between good and evil, theism and atheism, moral absolutism and moral relativism, individualism and collectivism, capitalism and socialism, and honesty and deceit conflicts that, in the final analysis, are about the same thing.
The main characters speak and behave much unlike ordinary people. That is as it should be; extraordinary individuals do not carry on in ordinary fashion. The protagonists are uncommonly intellectual, but they are by no means elitist. They are not of the intelligentsia. Though danger and death continually threaten them, Christa Joyner, Jack Joyner, Alan John, and their cohorts never cower. They are as valiant as they are brilliant. They are as fearless as they are pure.
The Second Hill is atypical of fiction in that it contains copious historical and expository endnotes. Endnotes are requisite here because the narrative is grounded in history, and explanation is absolutely necessary to help the reader understand the philosophical, theological, and political aspects of the plot.
Essentially, The Second Hill is about Western civilization, Western values, and Western heroes. Hopefully, it will cause most of those who peruse its pages to think deeply about where the world is and where it most certainly will wind up if it continues down the slippery slope of relativism.
Many will see this compelling novel as a conservative manifesto. That is what it is.āđāļāļĩāđāļĒāļ§āļāļąāļāļāļđāđāđāļāđāļ
After practicing law full-time for 18 years, Jon Gegenheimer, a native of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, was elected as the Jefferson Parish Clerk of Court in 1987. He was re-elected in 1991 after garnering 80% of the vote and was unopposed for re-election in 1995, 1999, 2003, and 2007. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology at Loyola University of the South in 1967; a Juris Doctor degree at Loyola University College of Law, where he was a member of the Loyola Law Review, in 1970; and a Master of Laws degree at Tulane University in 1981. Throughout his law school, professional, and public service years (1967 to present), Mr. Gegenheimer has authored myriad trial and appellate briefs and journal articles in the areas of commercial, criminal, maritime, and elections law. Since high school, he has been an avid reader of history, philosophy, Western literature, and politics. Mr. Gegenheimerâs personal library is home to many of what are called the âGreat Books,â the splendid works of the Westâs immortal thinkers and writers: Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Virgil, the inspired authors of the Old and New Testaments, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Milton, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Dante, Hume, Kant, Shakespeare, Darwin, Dickens, Mill, Nietzsche, Voltaire, Paine, Freud, Newton, Einstein, Conrad, Faulkner, (C.S.) Lewis, Woolf, Churchill, (Ayn) Rand, Buckley, and so on. Mr. Gegenheimer attributes those writing skills that he has accumulated over the last four decades and the ideas that he later advanced in The Second Hill to his reading and studying (a) the great writers aforementioned; (b) eloquent political essayists like George Will, David Brooks, Charles Krauthammer, and William Safire; and (c) the brilliant economists Hayek, Keynes, and Friedman.
