Lower Reaches of the River

The language of birds, scarecrows come to life, and encrypted maps on the roadside are among the imaginative visions that Adley Reynaud fabricates and filters through the warped lens of his inventive mind. He is high functioning, yet mentally afflicted young man, with a narrow band of extraordinary savant-like perceptive abilities. Adley renders the southern tidal marshland through the prism of his mind into an array of colorful visions embroidered with his refracted enhancements.

Adley's closest friend, Elliot, narrates the story. He is a young man who is bright, inquisitive, and lonely, set adrift as a child with the loss of his parents. We also encounter while seining on the Gulf shore, Early Watts, a sage, wizened old war vet and inveterate habitué of barrooms and poker tables. He has a rare gift, a preternatural ability for sensing danger and divining the mysteries of the natural world. Charlene and Lucy, two young victims of a sex slave racket; Shen Gau, an old Chinese historian, and refugee; and Felix, a one-eyed gypsy-cab driver also appears early in the story.

We follow this group of damaged and marginalized characters as they navigate an ever-changing set of threatening circumstances on an adventure both geographical and mystical, both visceral and cerebral.

Dettagli