Book Title: SHADES OF MERCY Character Name: Porter Beck   How would you describe your family or your childhood? Up until a couple of years ago, I would have been able describe my family easily and with lots of fond memories. But it turns out I’m not who I really thought I was. What I can tell you is that I spent more than twenty years in the army, and about three years ago I returned to the place I grew up, Lincoln County, Nevada. My mother died when I was a boy. Like a lot of folks who grew up downwind of all the above-ground nuclear tests in the 1950s, she got cancer. Pop is still kicking, though he has dementia now, and I took over the job as sheriff here, a job he held for more than thirty years. My adopted sister, Brinley, who knows more about guns than anyone I know, swings in and out of our lives like a pendulum, going from one extreme to the next. Our childhood was spent in the high desert here, in a county the size of Maryland but with only about 6,000 people. And while you might think things would…