The Raymond Hatcher Stories

A person’s life begins as a seedling. What happens next depends upon cultivation. Some lives stay close to the ground. Others grow tall and spread wide branches. Varieties are many. How the seedling grows is dependent upon inspiration, self-esteem, perspective, ambition, and, of course, luck. A mature life in the end can be only a dot on a landscape or a thing of majesty that affects present and future generations nearby and far away.

Raymond Hatcher’s life at first glance is a garden tree. He was married to one woman for almost seventy years. The marriage was childless. Raymond’s public career was stodgy, working in diplomatic services for the State Department. Upon retirement he and his wife moved to a farmhouse and he became a birdwatcher. His wife owned a bakery in a small nearby town on the banks of the Hudson River, upstate New York. The most unusual thing that happened to Raymond and Megan was their tragic deaths on their porch, the victims of a hunter’s stray bullet.

Actually, however, Raymond’s life is a majestic tree. Raymond was a spy, first for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II and thereafter for the agency that succeeded it. For more than seventy years, Raymond kept this secret. His life had a remarkable effect on world events and on many people, particularly his fellow spies during World War II in Indochina and several men and women he later mentored. The last of his mentees was his granddaughter, a secret he himself only learned late in his eighties.

Two of the stories about Raymond Hatcher have been published. A Lion in the Grass tells the story of Raymond’s life and introduces all of the people whose lives his life impacted. The Narrows tells a story about the family of Herrick Wright, who, as a child, was rescued by Raymond from a jungle in Vietnam. A third novel, Belinda, to be published in March 2021, is a story about a romance between a man Raymond mentored, Jay Jackson., and Belinda Larkin, his former law firm partner.