title: The Chording of T. O. Malone
author: Franklin, Barclay
description: A concert guitarist, Bruce Michael MacFarland has played in back-alley bistros and nightclubs across America. After playing at the Kennedy Center for the first time, he comes home to Georgia and finds his pregnant wife, Callie, in bed with a stranger. In a fit of rage, he shoots them both.He escapes from a Florida prison, makes his way through the Everglades, and arrives at his cabin in the mountains of Colorado. There he meets and falls in love with Marcie Douglass, a newspaper reporter from Chicago who has rented the A-frame below his for the summer.Bruce trusts Marcie to get word to his parents that he didn't die in the Everglades. Her visit to the MacFarland place in North Carolina allows FBI agents to track her back to Bruce and he's arrested. While awaiting a new trial, he marries Marcie.Bruce is sentenced to six years in a minimum-security facility. When he's released, he must get reacquainted with his wife and children.He gets another opportunity to play a formal concert at the Kennedy Center. After the intermission, he is joined on stage by all the members of the MacFarland clan as they play some down-home country music.