Idgie Says:
At first I wasn't sure that I would be interested in a book about a group of men going to therapy to recover from their women issues. Talk about a wet napkin group of men. Wasn't sure I would even care. But once again, Terry makes magic with his words.
I grew interested in them, not because they were interesting characters - that's still debatable for some - but because TERRY was so interesting to listen to. Terry himself made the story grab me via the ebb and flow of his words. He has a delicious phrasing style that hooked me immediately once I was in between the pages of his novel.
As for the story - it's different from many of the novels racing around town and that in itself always brings new readers. Again, I don't think I would have picked up the book, except for the author's name on the cover. But once I did, I was pleased.
So many novels on the market deal with women of a certain age going through angst over the men in, or no longer in, their lives and how they find a group of women to become close to and help each other cope. Nice to see the same thing in a more masculine tone.
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Mercer University Press
September, 2014
When he arrives on Neal’s Island to begin 10 days of intensive group therapy to treat his obsession for a woman he cannot forget, he brings with him the pseudonym of Bloodworth.
Pseudonyms are a requirement to participate
in Dr. Carson X. Willingham’s unconventional and often bizarre seminars – a
deliberate lie to inspire the search for a needed truth.
What he discovers is an island of ghosts, an
island of intense, but fragile, relationships founded on deceit, and, yet, an
island strangely harboring the yearned-for promise of healing.
The same is true for Barkeep, Menlo, Max, and
Godsick -- his fellow members in the seminar, each with his own pseudonym and
each suffering his own agony because of a relationship with a woman.
Vastly different as individuals, yet
suffering the same crippling malady of obsession, the five are not prepared for
the antics of Carson X. Willingham. He is maverick and madman, a brilliant
investigator of his subjects, a mesmerizing performer, and either a genius or a
charlatan with a rare gift of persuasion.
Willingham is also a man with his own demons,
caused by his own history of obsession.
It is in this environment that Bloodworth
finds himself faced with the delicate question of honesty as he tries to free
the memory of his Kalee, and begin his new journey into the uncertainty of what
might be.