Ghostfires
A Novel
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- 10,99 €
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- 10,99 €
Publisher Description
One man believes Linda Bascomb was murdered. A second believes she took her own life. The first is her husband, Warren, an aging surgeon who has lost his medical license because of his morphine addiction. The second is her son, Ben, a husband and father who struggles every day to remain sober and avoid bankruptcy.
Warren has entered into an arrangement with his son that has since kept Ben financially afloat and Warren supplied with morphine. Ben's wife, Emma, desperately seeks to distance her husband from Warren before their relationship destroys her family. Opposing her efforts is Victor Javier, the mastermind of the arrangement, an immigrant whose cruelty masks a hope for his mother's deliverance.
Though Linda Bascomb was once the true connection between Warren and Ben, her memory becomes the specter that polarizes them. As the pain of unresolved history accumulates, their embittered agreement collapses, and in the process destroys one life, changes another forever, and drives both from the emotional and chemical shelters in which they hide. In the inevitable reckoning, Ben and Warren are forced to acknowledge the power the dead exert on the living, the elusive nature of redemption, and the ways the things we lose define us.
Sometimes shocking, always incisive, Keith Dixon's brilliant debut novel is a harsh but compassionate portrayal of love and need. Set on the emotionally bleak outskirts of New York City, Ghostfires, with stylistic power and psychological precision, lays bare a corrupt American dream - and a family with scores to settle.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As this strong debut by a New York Times editor begins, Warren Bascomb, a 68-year-old defrocked surgeon and morphine addict, awaits a Dilaudid delivery from a flight attendant cum drug smuggler. Involved in the drug business, though not present, is Warren's estranged son, Ben, a recovering alcoholic desperate for money to support his family. When the drug money proves insufficient, Ben buries his valuables, whacks himself with a baseball bat and cries robbery. The police who respond mistake him for the robber and shoot him in the leg. Ben's hospital stay involves physical and emotional therapy, and in alternating chapters, both he and Warren confront their demons. Looming particularly large is William Bascomb, Warren's late father. Warren's morphine addiction stems from the burns he suffered trying to save William from a fire, but William left everything to Ben, including his Harvard ring, in a "final jab from the grave" for Warren. There's also the matter of Ben's late mother: dying of cancer, she begged her son to help her kill herself, which Warren believes was murder. Meanwhile, Warren is growing nervous about running low on his morphine supply and being answerable for his son's debts. Once Ben is released and shows little inclination to resume the smuggling, Warren's desperation comes to a head. Dixon has crafted a sensitive portrayal of complex family dynamics that resists the pitfalls of many father-son sagas. Especially impressive is the way he develops his minor characters: while fully formed and complex, they deepen readers' understanding of the Bascombs rather than distract from it.
