I am happy to be taking part in the celebrations for the publication of Paul E Hardisty's latest standalone novel, Turbulent Wake and have an extract for you to sample today.
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?
Extract
First Snow
The world was different then.
Looking back, the old man was
no longer sure if this realisation was new, had come upon him slowly over
years, or if perhaps, somehow, he’d known it back then, as a child. This lack
of certainty did not change the truth of it, however. The world was entirely
different now. In tone and texture, in scale and colour and voice, in the
abundance of animals and birds, in the everyday behaviour of people, in the
places that were once covered in trees and bushes and meadows and later transformed
into houses and roads and shopping centres. Even the weather was different,
back then.
It was the year before the men came and cut down all the big elms on
their street. Summer had been hot, had seemed to last forever. The first frost
came as a profound surprise, as if the neighbourhood had been suddenly shifted
north, closer to the Arctic Circle. The boy’s father piled the brown and gold
elm leaves into mountains on the front lawn. The boy loved to jump into them
and roll inside the piles until he was covered, the sweet smell of the new-dead
leaves strong inside him, so that the old man could smell it now, so much
closer to the end than the beginning.
The boy knew it was close. Days were
shorter. Three mornings in a row now he’d awoken to see frost crusting the
grass, icing the naked branches of the trees. Porridge for breakfast, mittens
and hats to school, steam in your breath, Christmas coming. Hockey season
imminent, perhaps a new pair of skates, if he was lucky. Time thick and heavy
and viscous, unwilling to be rushed, infinite. Completely trustworthy. And the
boy, who had not yet learned of relativity, had no conception of time’s variant
properties, its fluidity or its ultimate dependency on the observer.
And every night the boy would lie in his bed and stare at
the window and the glow from the streetlight through the curtains. He would
watch the slow progress of a car’s passing headlights thrown as a wedge of
light angling left to right across the ceiling, and he’d hope that tomorrow
would be the day.
Sometimes, lying in the darkness, unable to sleep, he’d think
about his father’s gun. He’d found it in the closet in his bedroom, hidden
inside a shoe box in the back, among a pile of other boxes. It was a short
thing, with a barrel that spun like the ones he’d seen cops carrying on TV, and
spaces for six bullets. Smith & Wesson it said on the handle. He found the
bullets, too. He wasn’t sure how to work it, how to open the barrel up so you
could put the bullets in. He’d tried putting them in from the front, but they
didn’t fit. He knew he wasn’t supposed to play with it, that it was dangerous.
He didn’t tell anyone about it, put it all back the way he found it. Except for
three bullets. Those he kept. There was a whole box. No one would miss them.
He’d put them into his treasure tin, hidden it away in his desk drawer.
In his
head he knew how it would be. He’d wake and it would still be dark. The first
thing he’d notice would be the quiet. As if someone had thrown a blanket over
the city, muffling its groans, its cries and complaints. He’d jump down from
his bed and run to the window, duck under the heavy curtains. His little
brother would be there beside him. He’d help him up on to the ledge, so he
could see out. And there it would be. A new world. Everything transformed,
softened somehow, all the hard edges rounded out, corniced and bevelled, houses
and cars and trees, the street and the kerbs and gutters made pure. And in the
yellow cones of lamplight, thick heavy flakes streaming down and down.
The boy
lay listening to his brother’s breathing, the slow, whispered rhythm drifting
up from the lower bunk, and the occasional rattle of the radiator, the gurgle
as the hot water flowed through the pipes. The wind in the trees outside the
window. He was warm and safe and excited. Tomorrow might be the day.
My Thoughts
Having read and reviewed two of Paul E Hardisty's previous thrillers, Reconciliation for the Dead and Absolution, I can say that Turbulent Wake has a completely different feel. Introspective and thoughtful, it follows the lives of two men, Ethan and his father, Warren. Ethan learns of his father's life through his diaries which Ethan has been left after his death. The two men's life-stories are spread out for us through the novel, side by side and you get to see the effect each episode his father recounts has on Ethan and his future.
You feel that you have been taken on a far-reaching tour around the globe and each setting is filled with the environmental details you would see there. Full of highs and lows, it is also an emotional journey for both men, with subtlety and depth in the writing. There are some genuinely shocking moments, with the pace fine-tuned. With a character driven narrative, this is a sophisticated read to savour.
In short: An multi-layered novel as a son reappraises the past.
About the Author
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.
Thanks to Paul E Hardisty, Karen Sullivan and Anne Cater of Orenda Books for a copy of the book and a place on the tour.
Don't forget to check out the rest of the tour!
Thanks so much Pam x
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