It's an absolute pleasure to take part in the BlogTour Turbulent Wake by Paul E.Hardisty. It's literary fiction, an attempt to reconcile the past and the present to be able to to move on.
Canadian Paul E Hardisty has spent 25 years working all over the world as an engineer, hydrologist and environmental scientist. He has roughnecked on oil rigs in Texas, explored for gold in the Arctic, mapped geology in Eastern Turkey (where he was befriended by PKK rebels), and rehabilitated water wells in the wilds of Africa.
He was in Ethiopia in 1991 as the Mengistu regime fell, and was bumped from one of the last flights out of Addis Ababa by bureaucrats and their families fleeing the rebels. In 1993 he survived a bomb blast in a café in Sana’a, and was one of the last Westerners of out Yemen before the outbreak of the 1994 civil war. Paul is a university professor and CEO of the Australian Institute of Marine Science AIMS).
The first four novels in his Claymore Straker series, The Abrupt Physics of Dying, The Evolution of Fear, Reconciliation for the Dead and Absolution all received great critical acclaim and The Abrupt Physics of Dying was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger and was a Daily Telegraph Thriller of the Year. Paul is a sailor, a private pilot, keen outdoorsman, conservation volunteer, and lives in Western Australia.
Follow @Hardisty_Paul or @Orendabooks on Twitter, Follow Paul on Facebook, on Goodreads,
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About the book
A bewitching, powerful and deeply moving story of love, loss and grief. This extraordinary departure from the critically acclaimed thriller writer Paul E Hardisty explores the indelible damage we can do to those closest to us, the tragedy of history repeating itself and ultimately, the power of redemption in a time of change. Paul drew on his own experiences of travelling around the world as an engineer, from the dangerous deserts of Yemen, the oil rigs of Texas, the wild rivers of Africa, to the stunning coral cays of the Caribbean.
Ethan Scofield returns to the place of his birth to bury his father, with whom he had a difficult relationship. Whilst clearing out the old man’s house, he finds a strange manuscript, a collection of
vignettes and stories that cover the whole of his father ’s turbulent and restless life.
As his own life unravels before him, Ethan works his way through the manuscript, searching for answers to the mysteries that have plagued him since he was a child. What happened to his little brother? Why was his mother taken from him? And why, in the end, when there was no one left for him, did his own father push him away?
I have read Absolution and Reconciliation by Hardisty, they are action packed novels with hard-hitting themes. They are good reads, but this is a great read.
The story alternates between two timelines, past and present, and the voices of father and son. When his father dies Ethan finds a manuscript full of stories describing defining moments in Warren's life. Warren, the child, the teen, the young man, the adult and the father. The boy full of dreams who became the man who had to bury those dreams.
Through these flashbacks, they are written Kodak moments in a way, Ethan starts to understand the way his father formed his character, even if he wasn't aware of that fact. He goes on a journey, which starts with anger and resentment and ends with understanding and perhaps even forgiveness.
It's a structure built out of emotions stretching over a lifetime. The emotions of a young boy who becomes a father, but lacks the capacity to build a connection to his son. His son isn't aware that his father is repeating a pattern of behaviour taught to him by his own father. So, there they stand three generations of men with little or no understanding of how to build loving and lasting relationships with their children.
It's literary fiction, an attempt to reconcile the past and the present with memories and the blank spaces that are slowly being filled up as Ethan discovers everything his father never told him. The things he should have said and done, the man he could have been, but failed because of his own past.
This is the best I have read yet by Hardisty. I loved the contrast between Warren experiencing his painful and often confusing past, and Ethan reliving those moments, as the man who knows the adult Warren but not the innocent boy Warren. Having to accept that both of those people exist in the same body with experiences, secrets and memories Ethan was never aware of and many he will never know.
I think the crux of this story is something quite simple that we rarely acknowledge in our daily lives and relationships. We only ever know what a person wants us to know, to a certain extent. As adults it is hard to reconcile the opinions we have of our parents s adults with the image of them as vulnerable children.
I will take my secrets, my hidden moments, my worst experiences and my inner thoughts to my grave. There will be no manuscript. My secrets end with me. I know how demons can haunt the people you reveal those demons to. The question is whether they will haunt Ethan too or will he find the answers to all of his questions hidden in the written words of his father?
Buy Turbulent Wake at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher: Orenda Books; pub date 16 May 2019. Buy at Amazon com.
Read my review of Reconciliation by Paul E. Hardisty.
Read my review of Absolution by Paul E. Hardisty.
