Tad Crawford – författare

A masterful continuation of the journey of Odysseus after he returned home from his odyssey.  Here is a brilliant recounting of the life of Odysseus after his safe return to the island of Ithaca, his wife Penelope, and his son Telemachus. Countless readers have thrilled to the adventures of Odysseus in The Iliad and The Odyssey, but what further adventures awaited him after his ten years of war and ten years of wandering?   Narrated by Telemachus to the bard Phemios, On Wine-Dark Seas speaks of the human drama of a man gone twenty years from home and family, a man who saw Troy on the night of its destruction, a man who lives the special quest which is his destiny. In probing the inner journeys of a son and father separated twenty years who must come to terms with each other and their ruthless slaughter of the suitors of Penelope, it reveals the doubts and joys of Odysseus, Penelope, and Telemachus. As Telemachus tells Phemios: “My father will be known to the future not as the man he was, but as the man of whom you sing. Often at Troy he called himself ‘the father of Telemachus,’ so I too have a part to speak in his story. Wealthy men can pay some poets to chant a story first this way, then another. I cannot offer you wealth to hear me, but only the truth I know.”        The novel is a masterful recreating of the ancient mind, the landscape of Greece steeped in mythos and the gods, and the human dramas of characters made famous for all time by The Iliad and The Odyssey.

A Floating Life will delight lovers of Kafka, Murakami, and the magic realism of Gabriel García Márquez. A nameless narrator awakens to the muddle of middle age, no longer certain who or what he is. He finds himself at a party talking to a woman he doesn''t know who proves to be his wife. Soon separated but still living in the same apartment, he is threatened by a litigious dachshund and saddled with a stubborn case of erectile dysfunction in a world that seems held together by increasingly mercurial laws and elusive boundaries. His relationship deepens with an elderly Dutch model maker named Pecheur whose miniature boats are erratically offered for sale in a hard-to-find shop called The Floating World. Enlivened by Pecheur''s dream to tame the destructive forces of nature, the narrator begins to find his bearings. With quiet humor and wisdom, A Floating Life charts its course among images that surprise and disorient, such as a job interview in a steam room with a one-eyed, seven-foot-tall chef, a midnight intrusion of bears, and the narrator’s breast feeding of the baby he has birthed.      "Equal parts science fiction, magic realism, and hard-boiled detective story, A Floating Life is a dizzying journey . . .  a seamless, spellbinding narrative in the lineage of Borges, Castaneda, and Philip K. Dick."—Kenneth Goldsmith, author of Uncreative Writing

A Woman in the Wild is a revealing and memorable portrait of a woman boldly facing her demons in pursuit of a meaningful life.   A psychologist in crisis leaves her established practice in the city for an open-ended retreat in the mountains at the Institute for Healing and Transformation. Feeling lost, betrayed, and stricken by guilt not to have saved her daughter from sexual abuse, she hopes to find a new path to ease her pain and uncertainties.   Soon after her arrival, a “wild” man who roamed the forest with a bear is brought to the institute. When the man is given to her care, she performs a suspenseful balancing as she seeks to heal him as well as herself.   Hiking and meditating each day, she initiates an inner journey that shakes her free from the familiar. As the months pass, she engages her guilt and sorrow, confronts her failures, weighs the limits of therapy and self-forgiveness, and seeks to unleash the healing powers of the unconscious and of love. Readers will find this an absorbing and dramatic novel of abuse, resilience, and the quest for transformation.