Saving Charles — Larry Matthews

It's been thirty years since Charles was the most famous young healer in America and the magic is gone. His life on Paradise Mountain is empty. His marriage is stale. His children despise him. He's as lost as he was all those years ago when he left the backwoods for a life that was, for a time, unimaginable. Now middle-aged, he takes to the road again looking for the magic of his life and reunites with the singer Johnny Jones. Now playing rodeos and bars, Jones is a long way from the days when he filled arenas with screaming fans. Trying to rekindle the good life of their younger years. Charles and Johnny find instead a drug-dealing spiritual leader charlatan who convinces them to stage a nationally promoted reunion that produces a calamity. Charles soon finds himself in a federal prison camp, left to ponder his values and his life, where he seeks the counsel of gangsters and hustlers. Saving Charles is about a man's journey to find his own soul after he had saved so many others.