"Twartz makes the self-introspection meaningful and powerful, tying it deeply and effectively to the journey, to the action, and to each character. I have to agree with Jessica. "What matters is understanding the past and how it's led us here. What matters is how we use what we've learned, how this can all mend the future."
- Rebecca Dodge, Emeritus and Adjunct Associate Professor,
Midwestern State University
"A story of reconciliation as Harry and Jessica struggle to face the violent past of their ancestors, while attempting to bring order into their chaotic lives. Stephen Swartz narrates a tale of adventure and spiritual intrigue."
- Kenneth N. Price, author of Kokoda Mist
"There is great beauty seen on their journey - a 'vast morning curtain draped about the horizon.' These descriptions leave the reader with a sense of calm against the horrors and revelations of Jimmy's past, and the book becomes uplifting and one of hope for the future."
- Judith Flitcroft, author of Walk Back in Time
Review
This final book in a moving trilogy begins when Harry's unnamed interlocutor tells his visitor "It's been a while. You seem changed since I last saw you." He recognizes "a change in the face, tension released, equanimity" in his visitor. We have followed Harry's long journey to this point, and now we hear what has transpired since the end of book two, "The Severed Cord." Harry and Jessica, grandchildren of WWI veterans, have recognized the source of intergenerational familial dysfunction - the cord that connected them to their grandfathers' mutual traumatic experiences during the war. Separately and together, Harry and Jessica are nearly capable of cutting that cord, of escaping "the ceaseless authority of past suffering". In a final journey they seek answers about the fate of Jimmy, Jessica's aboriginal grandfather and half-brother of Harry's grandfather. Their goal is to find the final link in the "the chain that had always dragged them low, into the mire of uncertainty and despair." They seek evidence of Jimmy's final years, after he abandoned his family.
The final journey transpires quickly, over a mere month. The first steps in the trek to follow Jimmy's path reintroduce Harry's skepticism about any kind of spirituality. This thread will reappear throughout the book, as Harry questions whether or not he can "park his skepticism and admit to the possibility of the divine". He's on the journey with a person who feels the answers they seek won't come from something that can't tie their thoughts and feelings together - won't come from logic and scientific reasoning. The action over the weeks engages and even endangers both Harry's and Jessica's families, with violence, illness, and serial manipulations that could stop less determined - and less newly confident - individuals from continuing. Harry persists, instead of running, instead of surrendering to his own "instinct for self-preservation." Through his growing capability for commitment, and his openness to the presence of "superior forces", he begins to become a positive influence within his own life and that of others.
- Rebecca Dodge, Emeritus and Adjunct Associate Professor, Midwestern State University
