Toward Him Still

Toward Him Still opens with a Prelude enigmatically establishing Thomasnaming himself Jimmyas a mute janitor in a high school, and consisting of various writings authored by him, and an ongoing commentary by a teacher at the school who has come into possession of Thomas'/Jimmy's notebooks and manuscripts, becomes captivated by what she reads and remembers of him while he was at school.

Part One includes a first-person narrative addressed to a Police Inspector and establishes Thomas on the run as a victim of mistaken identity.

Part Two continues his story in the third person in the form of an extended letter sent by him to a priest named Father Martin, an old friend. Thomas is by then living on his own island in the Pacific Northwest, haunted by remembrances of his late wife and hunted, he claims, by the most powerful organization in the world, one that has long sought to obtain from him a first principle equation of power that he denies them. Thomas believes that this organization murdered his wife to punish him for his intransigence.

As Father Martin makes his way through the manuscript he is nagged by memory, and annotates the text in anger, amusement and sorrow, increasingly piqued by suspicions that Thomas is simply raving. Indulging with growing fascination in the morphine with which he injects himself to assuage the pain of a rotting hand, Father Martin is urged into adventure by a need to see his old friend, and sets out by ferry to meet with him. On the ferry, he becomes acquainted with a young woman who helps him reach his destination, and becomes caught up in Father Martin's destiny and the spell of Thomas's text.

Toward Him Still tells a story of love enduring beyond mortality, a tribute to the beauty of nature, friendship, and language, the limits of ingenuity in a world of loss, conflict and greed.

Dettagli