‘Garden of Heaven’ Takes Readers into World of Magic, Quantum Entanglements
In my second novel set in the high country of Glacier National Park, Montana, “Garden of Heaven: an Odyssey,” I tell a multi-layered story about a man whose life is twisted by the Vietnam War, compromised by the denizens of a corrupt college, and destroyed by a lover out for revenge.
When nineteen-year-old David Ward climbs the sacred mountain Nináistuko seeking a vision, the golden eagle of earth flings him back onto the prairie and the black horse of dreams shows him the future. Though his eyes are opened, fate hides exactly what he needs to know.
The spiritual journey that follows leads him through the mountains of Pakistan, the swamps of North Florida, the beaches of Hawaii, the waters of the South China Sea and the ivy-covered halls of an Illinois college as he attempts to sort out the shattered puzzle of his life.
A blend of realism and magical realism, the novel’s robust, non-linear structure emulates the randomness of memory while its multi-column sections illustrate the simultaneity of time’s pathways in a quantum universe.
Like my first novel “The Sun Singer,” also set in Glacier National Park, “Garden of Heaven” follows the late Joseph Campbell’s mythic hero’s path journey of personal transformation popularized in such films as “Star Wars” and “The Matrix.”
While “Garden of Heaven” has characters and themes in common with “The Sun Singer,” the two novels can be read independently of each other.
Available in both a paperback and an electronic edition, “Garden of Heaven” can be found at Amazon, OmniLit and other online booksellers and by order from any bookstore.
