The Isle of Kheria - eBook
$4.99 Kindle edition. Order directly from Amazon
$4.99 Epub edition. Order directly from Kobo
Already crazed at the loss of his wife, Joel Brewster is now living a reclusive life on a farm commune in Canada when he learns of the passing of his oldest friend, Aidan Allard. Compelled to journey to the Greek island, Khería, from which Aidan swam off into a storm and drowned, Joel seeks to quell his doubts about their friendship: haunted by the possible motivations of Aidan's death, he yearns for release from grief and guilt by this pilgrimmage of atonement.
The Isle of Kheria traces their lives in Joel’s dream-world encounters with spirits from his past. Hovering above all is the taunting, inaccessible islet, Khímaera, Aidan’s destination when he drowned—a fateful monster of myth, a chimeric illusion.
The intertwined though often ambivalent lives of these two friends race through much of the twentieth century, from childhoods in England and New England to frontline soldiering in World War II; from living in Greece during its civil war to years in futile US government service, and ultimately into rebellion while seeking new lives in Italy, England, the US and Canada. Most poignant are their abject failures in their ability to love — until, in the end, finding its profound reward.
These are fateful, Odyssean stories, and their resolutions evolve from a despairing dream-world into a reality rediscovered. They are written in Cabot's unique prose style, which was acclaimed in his earlier novels, The Joshua Tree and That Sweetest WIne.
For the cloth edition go here
Clothbound, sewn, jacketed, 320 pages, 5 x 8", 2012, 0-929701-98-1
Winner: 2013 Independent Publishers Silver IPPY for Literary Fiction