My Novels

The Great Equalizer

Set in South Florida in the early 1980’s, The Great Equalizer tells the story of Benny Horowitz, who drops out of college two weeks before his graduation, stopped dead in his tracks by an overwhelming fear for the planet’s future and his own mortality. Having left college, he finds a temporary job at a group home for developmentally disabled adults, whose “inappropriate” and “deviant” behavior he is charged with reshaping. It isn’t long before Benny begins to appreciate the uniqueness of each of the resident’s personalities and the richness of their worlds, and discovers it is he, not they, who is being reshaped—and reshaped through the eyes of one developmentally disabled resident in particular: 26 year-old artist Nadia Christov, who crafts remarkable trees out of clay. It is Nadia’s rare ability to see the world with fresh eyes—to appreciate the natural wonders surrounding her “everywhere and all the time”—that finally convinces Benny she might hold the keys to the greatest of his fears.

Rainbow Rhapsody

Rick Borsten, author of the critically acclaimed The Great Equalizer, again takes on issues of unlimited power and social responsibility.  The result is a second novel of vivid incident told with a strong vein of humor.

 Rhapsody Walker is a depressed rock and roll superstar, who, unlike his musician ancestors, has a worldwide fan base, and thus a startling amount of potential clout, but not a clue what to do with it other than sell out his concerts.  Then, a near death experience and an international nuclear crisis finally awaken him to life’s fragility and splendor, and to the madness of what his farmer/saxophone-playing grandfather calls “the White Machine.”  When the international crisis is averted, and after Rhap has recovered from the freak accident that nearly killed him, he turns his talents, huge fortune, and universal fame to political activism, particularly nuclear disarmament.  But as the novel winds to its unexpected climax, he’s forced to interrupt his planet-saving mission with the more prosaic circumstances of individual death.  Gradually, Rhap learns that his inheritance from his grandparents, who raised him, is not only musical.  Their loving commitment to him, to each other, and to the land are given energetic expression in Rhapsody’s public life and performance.

 Set in south Florida and the Pacific Northwest and spanning three generations of musicians from the 1920’s through the 1980’s, Rainbow Rhapsody is a contemporary Porgy and Bess, with many of the qualities of rock opera--a novel that touches the sacred corners of life and fashions a believable myth for those who refuse to become cynical, preferring to focus, instead, on the love and wonder—the “real rhapsody—“ there to be experienced during our journey.