The Author

Don Thompson is a retired software professional with a degree in Applied Physics and Information Science from the University of California, San Diego. He is currently writing fiction, running a small business helping senior citizens with technology challenges, and assisting in the development of a permaculture-inspired farm. Writing has been Don’s passion since the late 1990s, and Bending the Arc is his fifth book. He and his wife live with their golden retriever on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. To learn more about Don and his other books, please go here.

A Personal Note From the Author, April 2020

My biggest challenge (and fear) in writing this book stems from the obvious problem that I am a white man writing, at least in part, about the black experience in the United States. I’ve grown up in a society of white privilege and therefore cannot truly understand the depths of anger, despair, suspicion and pain experienced in various forms by nearly all people of color in this country. Nor can I fully appreciate both the pride and the internal tension which must arise when the same people succeed or rise to positions of power and wealth. And of course there is no single black or brown experience, just as there is no single white, female or male experience.

Fortunately, some excellent books and journalism, insights from the Southern Poverty Law Center and from friends with direct experience, have helped chip away at a portion of my ignorance. From that starting point, I’ve tried to tell a realistic but hopeful story of discovery and transformation, but primarily from a perspective I do have some experience with – that of a white middle-class family working their way through a variety of challenges at the end of the twentieth century.

But it is now two decades into the twenty-first century. Is the kind of hope expressed in this story still justified today? I’m tempted to despair when I see implicit permission being granted at the highest levels of government to treat hate speech as a First Amendment right, white nationalism as just another political option, human kindness as liberal political correctness, misogynism as normal male behavior, and withdrawal, isolation and fear as foreign policy norms. Perhaps these are new regressions – in practical effect they certainly are. But they are also windows, now blatantly thrown open, into longstanding realities we’ve historically preferred to hide.

Maybe it’s a good thing that these windows are so open right now. My hope is that the long lens of history will ultimately reveal today’s ugly rhetoric and policies as eye-openers helping to shock us back on track. My belief is that the moral arc of the universe will continue to bend toward justice, but it will need a lot more help from all of us in doing so.

One way you can help is by purchasing Bending the Arc and encouraging others to do the same. That’s because 100% of my proceeds go directly to support a wonderful organization called The Kindness Corps.