Q​ ​&​ ​A​ ​with​ ​the​ ​Author

Interviewer: How did you come to write the book?

Mike: This novel is nearer and dearer to me than anything else I’ve ever written. And I’ve poured more B, S & T into it, too. I trained as a screenwriter and The Rainbow Rim started out as a screenplay with a male lead. Over a long period of time, I began to use the screenplay as a rather involved outline. The male hero became a woman, Patsy Pringle. I have experience working with the severely mentally ill and the mentally impaired. Martin, Patsy’s son, is more or less sentenced into an IMD – and Institute for the Mentally Disabled. He has some intellectual deficits but is high functioning. I’ve worked with people from the streets and set some of my own experiences into this story. I’ve always been interested in the themes of forgiveness and redemption. Shake it all up and you’ve got a road story, an adventure, a portrayal of small-town America 30 years ago, and a portrait of the prurience of big city street life.

Interviewer: But it doesn’t sound like you’re anything of these things.

Mike: I used to do case management in a big city that, at a time when AIDS was a death sentence, had the largest number of HIV cases per capita in the country. It was because of high rates of IV drug use and prostitution. I worked with the SMI population – the severely mentally ill. They were all lumped together with the mentally impaired – people with low IQ’s. So you had this unfortunate bin that people were siloed into: people with addictions and psychiatric disorders along with individuals who had low IQ’s. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference. They often lived short, desperate lives.

I’ve also lived on the wild side. So there’s that.

Interviewer: What’s your book, The Rainbow Rim, about then?

Mike: The story is set in the late 90’s in Ukiah, a small town in downstate Illinois in a part of the state that has more in common with the Midsouth than with the Midwest or Chicago. The handsome Reverend Walter Tallman is the scion of an influential and wealthy family. His much younger wife is pregnant with their first child. Rev. Tallman has adopted a mentally impaired son, Martin, who’s just turned 18. Yet Martin’s still more of a boy than a man. Like his father, he’s very religious, chaste even. He’s never really explored the limits beyond his small town.

But Martin, whose father believes can’t live on his own because his IQ is in the borderline range, can’t seem to forgive his biological mother, who overdosed during her pregnancy with him, causing his mental impairment. Though he’s very religious, he comes up with schemes to find his real mother and do her in. What triggers his vengeance? He starts to get letters from his mother postmarked from L.A., asking him to come out and visit her.

Everybody in Ukiah admires, almost worships Rev. Tallman. He’s handsome, magnetic, and filled with compassion. He’s adopted Martin out of pity. But when he finally marries a much younger woman, Martin seems to have a built-in resentment against her, too. His new wife becomes afraid of him after Martin and his father build a snowwoman and Martin stabs the effigy to death with a plastic letter opener. With the birth of their child imminent, the Rev. Tallman commits Martin to an IMD, an Institute for the Mentally Disabled, for a psychiatric impairment Martin doesn’t really have.

Interviewer: Sounds a little depressing.

Mike: It’s poignant. But I believe the characters are compelling. And the story’s imbued with a lot of humor, too. The other end of the story is Martin’s mother, Patsy Pringle. She comes back to Ukiah to make amends to her son, Martin. Unlike the Rev. Tallman, Patsy grew up on the wrong side of town. With a long history of addiction, attempts at suicide, and petty crime, Patsy knows the mental health system, and gets herself committed to Martin’s institution. She realizes he can probably live on his own. Rather than allow him to live in a home for the rest of his life, she decides to break him out. That’s when the trouble really begins.

Interviewer: Why’s that?

Mike: Well, the secret which the Right Honorable Reverend doesn’t want anyone to know is that he’s Martin’s biological father. 18 years ago, when he was a 28-year-old youth minister, Walter tried to ‘save’ 16-year-old Patsy from a budding problem with addiction, but he couldn’t keep it in his pants and he got her pregnant instead. Patsy, who had beauty queen looks, fell in love with the Reverend, but to save himself and his budding career as a minister, he wants her to have an abortion. Heartbroken, Patsy overdoses, trying to kill herself and terminate her pregnancy in the process. Yet Martin is born prematurely and ends up mentally disabled. He’s never forgiven his real mother for his fate, and wants to leave the institution, track her down, and kill her. But does he have it in him to actually kill someone?

Patsy doesn’t know, so after she breaks her son out, she can’t tell him who she really is until she can convince him that a fallen woman such as herself could actually be a mother to him. Martin’s idea of motherhood is someone out of a 1950’s sitcom. So, he can’t hear it. He can’t hear the truth because he’s not ready to accept it. And Patsy can’t get across who she really is because she’s not really ready for motherhood.

Interviewer: That’s interesting dramatic tension.

Mike: It is. I originally wrote it as a screenplay, but when I finally found out what Hollywood was really like in terms of getting a spec screenplay produced, I turned it into a novel. And what Hollywood is really like – the sleezy underbelly – is the other end of the story. It’s not the Promised Land. Patsy helps Martin escape across country on an Amtrak train, on the back of a Harley, and thumbing rides from predatory truckers. While she’s trying to tell him who she really is, Martin falls in love with her instead. They’re chased by the Rev. Walter Tallman and his sleazy brother, the town sheriff, with warrants on Patsy for kidnapping and a half-dozen other serious charges. With a long record, she’s looking at serious prison time when they finally catch up to her on L.A.’s skid row.  Martin, who’s led a sheltered, biblically centered life, isn’t ready for any of it. So, it’s a coming-of-age story as well as a road story. That’s the kickoff.

Interviewer: What about the ending?

Mike: Well, what we have here is a bit of adventure and suspense, too, so I don’t want to ruin that.

© 2026 by Mihael C. Just