The Highway Diner

Twenty-year-old Murray is an aspiring artist, helping her mother run The Highway Diner, a struggling truck stop in Indiana. A deadly shooting occurs on premises, which temporarily closes the business. The shooting victim is a lifelong friend of The Commander, a psychologically crippled war veteran who runs a far-right militia compound in Michigan.

The Commander sees The Highway Diner as profiting from the death of his friend and as part of a liberal, teamster conspiracy with the deep state inside the federal government. His campaign against the diner includes death threats, kidnapping, stalking, and culminates in a bombing that kills nearly forty people, including Murray's fiance, Benjamin.

Once The Commander and his militia are defeated, Murray finds herself unable to paint. The trauma of violence leaves her pent up and crying at the easel every time she tries to create. She enrolls at the Art Institute of Chicago and learns that the process of painting makes her grief more meaningful. But will she ever be able to fall in love again?

Mark Paul Smith is the author of The Hitchhike; Honey and Leonard; The Reporter; and Rock and Roll Voodoo.

After an around the world hitchhike in 1972, he became a newspaper reporter and then played in a rock and roll band on Bourbon Street and on the road. He was a trial attorney from 1982 until his retirement in 2021.

Mark and his wife, artist Jody Hemphill Smith, own Castle Gallery Fine Art in Fort Wayne, Indiana.