Jacket Blurb
To live on the edge is to live existentially—without fear. In this work of magical realism, which spans almost half a century, we meet three young women who brave the elements of fate and fortune, passion and intrigue, living dangerously and with abandon on the highways and byways of the day. Sophia Pearl, a soldier, spy and teacher of philosophy, is at the center of the story, and we follow her life from the last days of Saigon to Berlin during the Cold War and beyond. Nikki Froelich is a German woman who suffers in an orphanage with her brother in Stasi-controlled East Germany. Lucy Cantor is the granddaughter of the man who invented, or perhaps more correctly, discovered the mathematics of infinity. She is also a mathematician, brilliant and passionate, who happens by chance to confront a criminal mastermind and perpetrator of horrific deeds from the past in quest of justice for his victims.
The lives and loves of all three women are inextricably bound together by their shared quest for justice and deliverance, and by their connection to an object with magical properties which Sophia Pearl discovers one night during a training mission in the Mojave Desert. But their shared quest comes with a price, with the specter of imminent danger from dark forces that wish to possess that coveted object. What choices will each woman need to make, and when it matters most—in the moment, existentially—to fend off those forces? Can they? Will they?
There is no reality except in action, wrote Jean-Paul Sartre, in defining the tenets of his philosophy of Existentialism. We are free whether we choose to be or not. We are the sum of our actions. Ultimately, each woman must decide on her preferred course of action through the labyrinth of time and history.
Rich in historical detail, deep in the emotional lives of its characters and drawing from many genres of modern fiction, The Existentialist takes us, as readers, on a journey of no return as we come away from this provocative and page-turning novel having seen and felt the world in ways we haven’t seen or felt before.
Another Excerpt
In the back of his mind, however, he was replaying the event: their early morning search through the streets of London for the time portal, the one their friend had kept saying would let you enter another period of history and travel forwards or backwards, future or past, depending on your preference. Cool, no? If they could only find the portal . . . the Quaerium . . . an old Roman bath located on Surrey Street, not far from Charing Cross station, in a basement flat where, once you took a bath and got all wet and happy, you could travel through time and on your journey spin off into other dimensions . . .
The N-cube had performed its interdimensional magic, all right, as she had said it would, in the nick, as it were, of present time: slowing down the ebb and flow of time itself, bending it, altering the space around them near Charing Cross station long enough to escape across the street moments before the IRA bombs went off.
Damn, motherfucker IRA terrorists, doing their damage to the people of London, innocent folk, bystanders, kids, people on the tube, coming up the stairs, crowded, in sync with each other, doing their thing in the centers of finance and banking. If it hadn’t been for the slowing down of time, all three of us would be bloody dead as horse-meat, me, my wife, and the baby in my wife’s belly. . . .
A creepy criminal family
A chronicle and exposé of a criminal family with a dark history: a father who is a child molester and pedophile who even rapes, molests and carries on with an incestuous relationship with his own daughter. A creepy monster and a sexual predator who molests children yet pretends and acts as an upright family man, meanwhile never revealing by hiding his real Jewish identity and keeping it a secret from everyone. He became a Scoutmaster and continued his sick, predatory and evil acts of pedophilia with young Boy Scouts. His daughter who is mental, crazy, neurotic and confused about her own sexual identity, even when she gets married and has a child but still maintains a network of lesbians for sex and companionship, as well as continuing to have sex with other men.
Some Excerpts
The description is one of a man in his mid-to-late forties, white hair, light-brown eyes, wearing black horn-rimmed glasses, with a twitch in one eye, always clearing his throat loudly in the presence of others to assert his authority, his dominance and unchallenged power over others. He stands about six feet tall, with broad shoulders, barrel chest, thin, sinewy arms and legs, totally out of shape. A man who is a kind of reflector, a mirror to the thoughts and feelings of others, seemingly compassionate but a real bastard. Mean as hell, demanding. Manipulative. He’s Ashkenazic Jewish from Czechoslovakia who hid his true identity as a Jew by stealing a German name and claiming he and his whole family were German, even though they never were.
“The people in the orphanages call him Spiegel. Behind his back they whisper and swear at him as Schweinhund!”
“Yep, the mirror, or better yet the swine dog. Seems to fit. More than appropriate.”
“Why?”
“A split personality. He appears as if he’s a nice guy when he’s really a monster. Inside, he’s stone cold, calculating, and without any feelings for anybody but himself. Er ist böse, as they say in German, he’s evil.”
“Now get this.”
“What?”
“You won’t believe it. My father writes that Spiegel is always offered the youngest boy for his pleasure when he comes on Saturdays or sometimes Sundays to deliver the funds for one of the operations, doling out the cash to the nurses and orderlies who run each operation. He’s a real Scheisskopf, all right.”
“That’s not all, Lucy. I just found something much worse. Listen to this: there’s a passage where your father describes in detail how Spiegel molested and raped his own daughter when she was in eighth grade at the age of fourteen, his only child, then would pass her along to his friends and colleagues to share sexually. At times, as a favor, he even sent her off to their homes to stay for a few weeks and indulge their sexual perversities by pretending she was there to play with their teenage kids, all the while continuing his molestation of his own daughter. It kept going on. And there’s another entry: this one is about his wife. She found out about it and underwent psychotherapy for years, but eventually ran away from home three times, for extended periods, weeks or months at a time, because she couldn’t take it anymore. He demanded by forcing his wife to always make their house tidy and so spotlessly clean that she became an obsessive-compulsive neat-freak. She had also become addicted to tranquilizers in order to be able to simply carry on. She kept drinking lots of coffee and smoking neurotically until finally in her old age she chain-smoked herself to death.”
“Can’t believe it, Thomas, it’s so bad.”
“Listen to this. There’s another entry about what happened to the daughter: she had stomach pains, saw doctors, was diagnosed with ulcers at the age of seventeen, and they recommended that she undergo deep psychotherapy. It lasted all her life because she had become highly neurotic, unstable, and dangerous to the people around her. The molestations by other men and the continuing incestuous relationship with her own father hardened her to the extent that she became a monster herself. She became wicked in her daily affairs with others, mistreating her then-husband, lying, cheating and stealing from him even after their divorce as well as her own business partners. She drove everybody around her crazy. She even thought having a child would ruin her career. If it was her choice, she would never have any children but greed made her agree to have a child, her only child, a daughter. She decided to use her husband as only a sperm-donor in order to give her parents a grandchild by showing off, to make sure their entire wealth gets inherited by her. And only her, because she divorced her husband soon after their daughter was born to make sure he’ll never get even a penny. Greed is an awesome thing, so she felt! Despite the court’s joint-custody divorce ruling, she stole and kept his only child away from him all his life and turned her against him. Then she kept dangling her to him by milking, stealing, and swindling him for more money for child support that she never used for their child but spent it all on herself. She made her wear second-hand clothing, shoes and everything and live with used, rotten, stinky, tattered furniture with cigarette burn holes to look poor for her parents to whom she lied about her ex-husband not paying any child support and made them pay as well. Voila, what a brilliant idea! A fourth source of income, beside her own, the cheated income from her business partners, and money from her ex-husband!
More Excerpts
“Another time, while her daughter was taking piano lessons—lessons paid for only by her ex-husband and his fiancé—the daughter’s music teacher invited only the paying couple to a summer festival of arts, crafts, and music called Festival by the Lake, where his daughter was one of the performers on a stage set for the music teacher’s students. The teacher sent the paying couple a free invitation, but not one for the mother since she never got involved nor paid or cared for the daughter’s music. No one could enter without buying tickets. The mother had learned about this free invitation and started to plot and plan. On the event day, she stepped forward and demanded her ex-husband show her the invitation, pretending she wanted only to take a look at it—and give it back. However, while still in his hand, she snatched and stole it away with anger. And then she ran as fast as she could to the entrance where tickets were taken, flashed and used the free invitation, which was in the name and full address of the daughter’s father and his fiancé, and got inside past the security guards before the ex-husband and his fiancé could use the invitation that rightfully belonged to them. They had to pay for two full, expensive tickets while she never paid a penny! Her crime of identity theft coupled with false impersonation and use of their address went unpunished. Her ex-husband was so enraged and stunned he wanted to call the police and the event security guards to arrest her but his fiancé stopped him, advising against it. To top it all off, during the performance the child’s mother kept showing off by jumping on to the stage, snapping photos, and stealing the limelight from the child, without any interest in the music. She showed she was the celebrity and star of the show, not the daughter, denying her child the credit she deserved for her one and only performance among many students performing their music. It was par for the course, to his mind. He had bought two identical keyboards with their stands, so his daughter could practice at his house and her mother’s because the mother refused to buy one and didn’t care. For music lessons, he had to drive over two hundred miles back and forth each time to take his daughter for her lessons, even though the teacher lived next to the mother’s house. For this event, the mother had poisoned the day already as she had refused to bring the keyboard and its stand, and ordered him to bring the one from his house. She told him, ‘If you don’t bring it, I couldn’t care less if my daughter doesn’t have an instrument to play and perform with.’ He had to drive another two hundred miles back and forth to this event, despite its location being very near the mother’s house. After the event the mother shoved and threw her daughter and the keyboard at the father and said, ‘Here, you take her home today and for the summer. I don’t have time for this shit! She’s too much of a burden. I have much better things to do in life. Enjoy your free invitation!’ With that, she took the invitation letter and its envelope out of her pocket and tore it up into pieces in front of them and threw it at them. And then charged off, leaving abruptly and angrily. What was to be a happy event for the child’s father and his fiancé had turned bitter and disgusting! While his fiancé understood fully, he still felt extremely embarrassed and cheated.
Who is an Existentialist?
The Existentialist, according to Sartre, never seeks to blame others for his or her situation in life: Man is the sum of his actions. Existence precedes essence. There is no victimhood, no victim card to be played in his view. One’s shadow should not be projected onto others, or onto society in general. I am a coward because I was born that way, or society made me into a coward. That doesn’t fly for an Existentialist. It’s not a reckoning with one’s self, it’s not authentic, and remember, authenticity is at the center of a person who dares to call himself or herself an existentialist.
Some more Excerpts
And meanwhile, with lady luck on her side, she had invited one of her old lovers to stay with her: a woman of her own age, a well-known lesbian, with short dishwater blond hair, mannish in voice, medium in height, pudgy with large breasts, bright-eyed and animated, charming and funny, cracking jokes about the memory of how the two of them had plotted and played tricks against unsuspecting men who had approached them for dates and affairs in their travels to Europe, mistakenly thinking they were straight! Sophia, in particular, enjoyed over and over again, recalling the episode while laughing out loudly when they were in Rome chased by Italian men and how they were able to plan and deftly stick their feet out and watch these men trip and stumble, falling flat on the ground, facedown. Ha ha ha!
Judy was from and lived in Rochester, New York, before coming to California, feeling lucky that she had escaped the terrible cold and miserable weather of New York State. She was now thoroughly enjoying the abundant sunshine and beautiful, mild California weather in every way she could. In bed, she was femme to Sophia’s butch, submissive to Sophia, who always preferred to be dominant and on top and decide when they would each have an orgasm.
Another Excerpt
At dusk, as the desert sun was setting across the horizon, we were fiddling with the N-cube, spinning it around a few times for good measure, analyzing the strange numbers and symbols that appeared at various intervals on its six faces, when suddenly the cube began to project a beam of light into the sky. The beam shot upward and danced across the cloudless sky like a floodlight of some kind. And then, as we pulled it down and held it, the cube lit up a series of fires on the horizon, flames bursting into the air, waves of heat vibrating in the setting desert sun. The outlines of two beings appeared a hundred feet away from us, beings composed of pure light, not human, although almost human in the size and shape of their bodies. They were connected somehow to the cube, to the light beams dancing feverishly in the desolate sky. And then, most strange of all, time came to a standstill, its passage halted as if in a dream. We both looked at each other and realized we were frozen in time, our bodies unable to move, not even blink an eye or crack a smile. It lasted for God knows how long, maybe a year, like Ambrose Bierce’s story about the man sentenced to death by hanging, living in a zone between life and death for almost a year. I knew then the dimensions of time had been altered, shifted into a state of non-time like you’d find at the center of a black hole in space where time itself ceases to exist. When we finally came out of it and checked our watches, it was the next day, Day #10 of our journey. I’m not sure how we awoke from it, what brought us back to the so-called present, but it scared the hell out of both of us. Liam could not recall anything similar ever happening before with the N-cube, although Sophia Pearl had once shared the details of her secret discovery of the cube in the Mojave Desert, which sounded kind of similar, especially the part about the lights in the sky. No doubt in her mind and ours that the N-cube was an interstellar object, capable of doing weird things we hardly knew anything about. As for the strange beings we spotted, they were only visible for a short period of time, or altered time, whatever. Liam and I decided that we’d had about enough of all this, so we packed up the 4 x 4, drenched in sweat, thirsty as dogs and dirty, and drove up north to the border out of the Zone.