Dear Book Browser: Thanks for stopping to look at this book. With millions of books in the market place, what chance does mine have to survive? That is what I, the author, am concerned about. I have just given birth, so to speak, to a new baby, the novel that has absorbed my interest and been my work for several years. I know that I have tremendous competition, not only with contemporary authors but also with authors of the classics, going back hundreds of years. Yet, I feel that I need to add my experiences to these mountains of fiction. I feel as though I have done so by introducing the fictitious Rick Stevens to my readers. Rick Stevens is the main protagonist, not the hero, in my novels. Like many Midwestern American men born in the first half of the 20th century, he and they have much in common. As you have guessed, I visualize myself as the fictitious Rick Sevens; we are similar but not identical in all aspects. Most of my life, I have kept a diary or journal. Also, I have written and received many letters which I have arranged, in chronological order, in three-ring notebooks. Besides my memories, these records have provided me with raw material and realistic detail for my novels. In this novel, I have described Rick's courtships, three marriages, his two sons and family life, including his failures and his successes. Since my retirement, after 35 years from my work as a high school science teacher (physics, earth science, chemistry, biology), I have kept myself busy with my writing. This is my eighth book. I hope you find it interesting and worth reading. If you have read two of my previous novels-I WAS HERE: The Young Manhood and Education of Rick Stevens and To Become a Rich American-you will realize this novel-A Farewell to Three Wives-becomes the third volume in the Trilogy. Stanley B. Graham

This novel attempts to present a complete, unvarnished, and rounded portrait of the young manhood and education of a white American male, RICK STEVENS, in a mid-western state. It depicts his good qualities as well as his bad ones-his "warts." The span of his life covered is from infancy to twenty-nine years of age. The years are from 1928 until 1957. Parts of his life included are: his early childhood and boyhood growing up on a farm and in a small town in northeastern Ohio; persecution and verbal abuse by his stepfather; constant moral support by his mother; his extreme shyness and inability to socialize during his high school years, his lack of a father-figure and its effect upon his personality, his dubious sexual education; his voluntary service in the United States Army Quartermaster Corps (the peacetime Army from 1946 - 1949); his clerical and stenographic training and jobs in the Army; his achievement of the rank of Corporal and then Sergeant; his friendships with Army buddies; his long automobile trip with friends through the Western states; his college education (with help of the GI Bill) at the University of Virginia and Ohio State University; his friendship and romance with a southern lady; his college friendships; his failures and his successes; his college summer jobs on Great Lakes iron ore freighters; his education courses and preparation for a science teaching career (Glasgow College, Pa.); his love life and his sex life; his European trip with his best friend-a fellow sailor and college chum. Moreover, the novel deals with the nearly complete transmutation of a shy young man into a gregarious man. Rick Stevens was determined to overcome his shyness, break out of hisshell, and find friends first in the Army and later in college. This novel depicts Rick becoming more of an actor than just a spectator. He was able to eliminate his laid-back passive behavior, and become a much more aggressive man-active, outgoing, generous, caring and fun-lo