The Isle of Khería - Hardcover

Robert Cabot

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0929701984 ISBN 13: 9780929701981

Publisher: McPherson & Company, 2012

Synopsis

Winner: 2013 Independent Publisher Award (IPPY) Silver Medal for Literary Fiction

The Isle of Kheria might be read as an elegy to the 20th century, or as a paean to the confusions of youth and its aftermath. But, more directly, this novel is the portrayal of a conflicted and unresolved forty-year friendship between two men deeply wounded by the circumstances of their lives. Still grief-stricken over his wife's recent death, Joel Brewster leaves his Canadian farm when he learns of the death of his best friend, Aidan Allard. In what may have been suicide, Aidan drowned while swimming off the coast of Khería, an island in the Agean. Filled with dread, Joel journeys to Kheria, seeking answers to Aidan's death, while confronting longstanding feelings of guilt. The lives of these men make for compelling stories, spanning much of the twentieth century and beginning with childhoods in England and New England; then frontline soldiering in World War II; exile to Greece at the time of its civil war; and with subsequent rebellion and searching for alternatives in Italy, England, the US and Canada; as well as throughout their attempts at love with women, and with each other. Far off Kheria's rocky coast, looming over all, is the foreboding presence of Khímaera, an mythic islet, an illusory goal. The Isle of Khería is written in a haunting, poetic prose, a unique style acclaimed in Cabot's earlier novels, The Joshua Tree and That Sweetest Wine.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Obsessed, crazed with grief at the loss of his wife, Joel, now living a reclusive life in a farm commune in Canada, learns of the death of his dearest friend, Aidan. He is compelled to journey to an island in Greece, Kher a, where Aidan had swum off into a storm and drowned. Joel's is a pilgrimage, seeking answers to doubts and guilt about their friendship and the motivations and circumstances of the death, seeking release from grief in atonement and resolution.

The novel traces the lives of the two men in Homeric journeys conducted largely in Joel's dream-world conversations with spirit visitations from his past. Overall is the presence of a foreboding inaccessible rock of an islet, Kh maera, Aidan's destination when he drowned a fateful mythic monster, a chimeric illusion. The extraordinary, intertwined, sometimes ambiguous lives of these two men are compelling stories, spanning much of the twentieth century: childhoods in England and New England; frontline soldiers in World War II; Greece with its civil war, its cruelties, its beauty, its crass materialism; brief years in US government service; rebellious, seeking alternative lives in Italy, England, in the US and Canada, in Greece; lives of tragic loves and, in the end, of profound reward.

Fateful, Odyssean stories, their resolutions evolve from a despairing elegiac dream-world into hopeful reality. Stories told in haunting, poetic prose, a unique style acclaimed in Cabot's earlier novels, The Joshua Tree and That Sweetest Wine.

About the Author:

A veteran of many of the campaigns of World War II, Robert Cabot received degrees from Harvard College and Yale Law School, served for some time in several capacities in the Executive Offi ce of the President in the Truman administrations, and then for ten years in the Marshall Plan and foreign aid programs in Italy, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Washington, D.C. He resigned from government service in protest over U.S. policy. Cabot moved to Italy, then to Greece, years later returning to the U.S. in a solo transatlantic sail with his thirty-foot sloop. He settled in Canada and later in Washington State. During these years, he wrote a series of articles decrying American policies in the Cold War, and for several years was active in citizen diplomacy in the Soviet Union and Afghanistan. He was a founder of the Turtle Island Fund promoting many conservation land trusts including an agricultural/educational community in British Columbia where he lived for five years; the Threshold Foundation helping social change projects around the world; a Waldorf School near Seattle; and, with his wife Penny, the Seattle Peoples Fund to help struggling ethnic communities in the Puget Sound Area. Writing, however, is his first love. He has written several novels, including: The Joshua Tree, Atheneum, 1970, republished several times, most recently by Bloomsbury in 2012; That Sweetest Wine, McPherson & Co., 1999, finalist for an Independent Publishers Award; and The Isle of Kheria, McPherson & Co., 2012. Cabot is a Fellow of the McDowell Colony, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Ucross Foundatgion.

About this edition

• Publisher: McPherson & Company
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0929701984
• ISBN 13: 9780929701981
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320