Calvin Barry Schwartz

Vichy Water is the author's first novel. He graduated from Rutgers University in 1969 with two degrees and practiced Pharmacy before a career in sales and currently imports eyewear from China. He is a husband and father. Interests include the environment, political science, spirituality, extending life and Rutgers sports. He auditioned for The Apprentice, went to the casting call for War of the Worlds and did his first keg stand in June 2008.

Synopsis:
Alex Zari, Egyptian and Elvin Stone meet in 1960 in a vacant lot as Newark high school students and become life long exceptional friends. Exceptional means trust, sharing life and spirituality, pulled from the author's experiences with angelic intervention and clairvoyance. Alex's haunting visions tells of becoming more than friends.
Elvin attends Rutgers University while Alex studies astronomy and joins discussion group at Princeton University where he's groomed to slide into a secret organization and government security clearance. Eventually, Alex lands in the Situation Room of the White House with potentially unsettling news for the President.
Life abruptly changes. Clandestine government meetings, murders, and a plane crash follow. Overcome by change and great loss, Elvin searches self in Sedona, Arizona, Guadalcanal, Montana, Key Largo, Vietnam War Memorials, Guadeloupe, and a Chicago African-American cemetery where Emmett Till is buried. Elvin marries twice, changes career to sales, has an affair with the daughter of a European businessman and when morality is confronted ponders the Virtue of Selfishness. The story twists through the universe, women's perspectives, racism, tech noir movies, environment, a college bar and a Hollywood antique store where a bottle of Vichy Water from 1942 is found.