Should you really pity poor Peter Harper? Award winning composer for film and TV. Has run the red carpet, wed a beauty, now with two pretty decent kids. Nice. Until he falls apart, developed a musician’s version of writer’s block, spent his hard-earned coin until his wife tossed him out. Who cares that he’s turned sullen, moody, and whiny? Sure, his agent has a gig lined up, but he needs to go hide out for a while. Get away from everything. Get the music flowing through him like the old days.
He finds the solitude he thinks is crucial to finding some musical
inspiration in an isolated rental cabin just off the remote Tremore Beach on
Ireland’s northwest coast — a place well known for fierce and dangerous
weather. The closest small town has little more than a pub, post office, and a
gift shop. Peter finds his solitude occasionally interrupted by neighbors Leo
and Marie Kogan, a retired American couple who’ve decided that traveling the
world is no longer what it’s cracked up to be, at least at their age. They sort of guide
him to the goings on in and around Tremore.
As he and the natives begin to get used to each other, Peter
gets invited to the periodic dinners the locals so look forward to. Worst part
is the drive back home. Long dark drives in the dark when one is a little loopy aren’t
fun. At least he has gotten to know the free-spirited Judie who runs the gift
shop.
And the storms. When they hit, they seem to go on for days.
And he quickly learns the intensity of the summer’s electrical storms. Trying
to get home before a monster storm is due to hit, Peter comes across a large
limb taken down by lightening. In trying to move the limb and realizes the folly.
He’s near a tree, on the top of a hill, under a massive storm cloud on the
verge of unloading. He manages to shove the limb off the road. Upon turning back
to the car, his world explodes in an immense globe of light. At first white, then blue before
he crashes to the ground to lie in an increasingly large puddle.
A party goer thinks Peter isn’t prepared for a storm like
this and heads out, finding him unconscious next to his car. The hospital keeps
him a couple of days and the docs are quite amazed he came through a lightning strike
relatively unscathed. Life goes on.
His kids come to stay with him for an extended stay while
his ex is off with her new beau. He and the kids seem to be doing OK, and they kind
of like Judie. It’s just those dreams that wake Peter up that no one can’t get
used to.
But it’s not just the dreams. Peter has started some serious
sleepwalking that takes him well away from the rental, sometimes by bike, other
times by car. His dreams are too disjointed to make much sense. The local docs don’t
know anything. Judie knows a counselor in Edinburgh and Peter finally makes an
appointment. The dreams are now coming into focus complete with faces, cars,
locations, and . . . weapons.
The first time, who cares. A second? Coincidence. Third? Something
is seriously wrong. Peter’s dreams are giving him visions of the near future with
startling accuracy and clarity. Now the dreams appear to be threatening the Kogans,
Judie, and his children.
Tremore Beach is a translation of Santiago’s first novel. If
I understand his Spanish language website, he is Portuguese by birth and now
living in Bilbao in northern Spain. I’ve read a few books that are translations
and it’s pretty easy to know. You would never know this was a translation. No
issues with context, slang, or anything.
You probably won’t like Peter Harper
in the beginning, but his affliction, his kids, and Judie help him evolve into
a pretty decent guy who turns out to be begrudgingly reliable when things get
tense. I am grateful to the good folks at Atria Books for the advance copy. At
first, the cover blurb really didn’t trip my trigger and it sat on my night
stand for too long. Big mistake. A fast read that reminds one of early
Stephen King (before he started writing those 800-1000 page beasts).
Don’t make the same mistake I made. Give this venture into the
solitude needed for a creative type to again find his mojo a chance.
ECD
Again, Thanks, Atria. No more will I let your titles gather
dust.
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