The Owl

There’s a killer stalking Flora's Island doing the Island’s bidding, and for washed-up legend Raney Tables, he must confront the killer head on or submit to a marginalized life full of remorse and fear.

THE OWL is a complete 130,000 word Fantasy-Thriller about an Island alive with mystery and a narrator trying to make sense of its incredible intent. Raney may be tall in height, but he’s short in spirit. Distracted by a case of A.D.H.D. and an accident that blinds his older brother, Raney retreats inside himself, relying on a ghostly Sachem and his dead grandfather for solace. As the story unwinds, so does the narrator, whose unfocused attention is drawn to memories of his past.

Books have been written about Islands before. Their diminutive physique and unique geography are perfect backdrops for studies of the human condition. I probe in a different way, with a haunted (and hunted) character whose élan is both humorous and intimate without meaning to be so. How else can such a multi-dimensional novel succeed in such a limited milieu without appearing to be merely macabre? Besides being a self-contained Fantasy-Thriller with a twist ending, THE OWL is also a meditation on loneliness and love, the same themes approached by Charles Frazier in COLD MOUNTAIN or by Margaret Atwood in her novels and stories.