Return to Sunrise

In 1977 on the streets of Miami, teenage runaway Grant Nichols tries to sell a dime bag of marijuana to a crew associated with the Cali drug cartel. The leader of the crew, impressed by Grant's spunk, invites him to join the cartel, where he eventually becomes a mole in the Miami-Dade Police Department. Then after the demise of the cartel in the 1990's, Grant becomes an honest cop and devoted father to his son, Mark. Twenty years later, his old cartel boss asks him to destroy evidence in a criminal case that threatens to expose them both, and Grant must now walk a shaky tightrope between his old life and new. The tightrope breaks when Mark, trying to get to the bottom of a recurring nightmare, recalls in therapy the fishing trip during which his father killed a man. Mark's pursuit of the truth of this memory ruptures his previously close relationship with his father and puts both their lives in danger. After an attempt is made on Mark's life, Grant risks everything to save his son— all the while hoping Mark never learns the identity of the man he killed that early morning on Lake Sunrise.

John Wallis is a retired psychotherapist and the author of AFTER CLAIRE: In Search of a Habitable Life. His short story, "Helen's Birthday," was a finalist in the 2013 Short Story America contest, and in 2015 was published in the Short Story America Anthology. He has also been published three times in the journal, Lectionary Homiletics.