Contemporary/Literary
Date Published: 6.27.19
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
“I don’t know how and I don’t know why, but I think I died today.” So begins the complex and mysterious journey of Gavin Goode and his family. What happened to Gavin and why? What secrets will emerge along the way? Frankie, his wife and a dress store owner, feels guilty, but why? His son, Ryan, who owns an ice cream parlor, and daughter-in-law, Jenna, who is a bank manager, are expecting their first baby. How will this trauma affect them? And what of Rosemary, Frankie’s best friend? Or Ben Hillman and eleven-year-old, Christopher? How are they implicated in the events that unfold around Gavin’s misfortune? This is a story of despair and hope, dreams and reality, uncertainty and faith, humor, secrecy, forgiveness and beginnings.
Excerpt:
Gavin is in the ICU in a coma. Frankie has visited
with the hospital chaplain several times trying to find some solace. In this
visit she talks about having apologized to her husband for something she has
done.
Frankie’s eyes whelm with tears. He
hands her a tissue.
“I feel like I could apologize from
now until forever…but there’s no eraser. I don’t know what to do.”
“Who does?”
In the conversations they had had
before, Frankie always appreciated Rev. Lorde’s respect for her
non-religiousness. He never pushed anything on her, never tried to convert her
or convince her of anything. But today she wishes he would. She wishes he would
give her an answer. She wishes he would raise his arms to the heavens and the sky
would open to a white robed choir; and the light would shine down on her, a
light that would shepherd her through this “valley of the shadow of death,” as
the Psalm says.
She looks fiercely at Rev. Lorde, her eyebrows
wedged, her lips taut. “I don’t mean any disrespect, but how do you do your job
day in and day out when the best you can offer is ‘Who does?’? Doesn’t your
religion, your God, whatever, tell you anything? Don’t your beliefs or your
faith, or whatever you want to call it, give you something more than that? When
you go to bed at night, isn’t there something more that helps you sleep and get
up to face the next day?” Frankie stops mid-breath and lets out a sigh. She
looks at her hands balled in her lap. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to...”
Rev. Lorde shuffles and shifts and adjusts,
resetting himself, maybe wanting to get more comfortable before speaking. He
puts one hand to his mouth and clears his throat.
“Sometimes when I go to bed at night, I pray.
Sometimes that is enough, not so much because I get answers, not because
anything is revealed, but because before I’m done, I fall asleep and whatever
was bothering me doesn’t matter for another six hours or so. More often than
not, though, when I lie in bed at night, I feel like I’m hanging by a thread;
and the thread is stretching and I’m afraid it’s going to break and I’m going
to fall to the bottom, wherever that may be. But I keep holding on and the
thread gets longer and longer until it’s as thin as a filament. But it doesn’t
break.” Lorde leans forward, elbows on his knees. “For me, holding on is faith;
and the thread, well, the thread is grace.”
About the Author
David B. Seaburn’s first novel, Darkness is as Light, was published in 2005. He followed with Pumpkin Hill (2007), Charlie No Face (2011), a Finalist for the National Indie Excellence Award in General Fiction, Chimney Bluffs (2012), More More Time (2015), and Parrot Talk (2017), which placed second in the TAZ Awards for Fiction (2017) and was short listed for the Somerset Award (2018). Seaburn’s upcoming novel, Gavin Goode, will be released in June 2019.
Seaburn is a retired marriage and family therapist, psychologist and Presbyterian minister who lives in Spencerport, NY with his wife, Bonnie. They have two daughters who are married and three wonderful grandchildren. After serving a rural parish for six years, Seaburn entered the mental health field. He was an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Family Medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center for nearly twenty years. There he was Director of the Family Therapy Training Program (Psychiatry) and Coordinator of the Psychosocial Medicine Rotation (Family Medicine). He also taught, practiced and conducted research. He published over sixty academic articles and two books. In 2005, Seaburn left the Medical Center to become Director of the Family Support Center in the Spencerport Central School District, a free counseling center for students and their families. Seaburn is currently a writing instructor at Writers and Books in Rochester, NY.
Visit his website at www.davidbseaburn.com.
Read his Psychology Today magazine blog at https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/going-out-not-knowing.
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ReplyDeleteThis sounds really good
ReplyDeleteSounds like a great read and one my sister would enjoy reading. I get books for two of them and they share a lot as well their books with one another. Thanks for the excerpt and giveaway.
ReplyDeleteAlways fun to hear about another new great book. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteI'm interested in this book because I want to know how it all works out for Gavin, his family and his friends. Thank you for sharing the book info and for offering a giveaway.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what happened to Gavin and if this book is all a test for Frankie's faith.
ReplyDelete