ISLAND BLUFFS by Alan Winter.
* I received this as a free eBook from
Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. *
What would a couple agree to in order to have a biological
child? Is anything too much? Carly and Gabe Berk face that question when
all conventional attempts have failed.
Gabe has a daughter from his first marriage but Carly is determined to
have the whole experience of giving birth to a child herself. When they hear about “The Baby Maker”, Dr.
Isadore Teplitsky, Carly is determined to take advantage of his
reputation. Dr. Teplitsky guarantees
Carly will become pregnant but only if she agree to the terms of his contract …
she must agree to carry twins, one her biological child and the other a child
for him, which she will give up at birth and never see again and in her last
trimester she much move within 30 minutes of his clinic.
Desperate though they are, Carly and Gabe still experience
doubts about their choice.
She
pulls her arm free. “How can you ask me
that question? My back is against the
wall.” Tears well up in her eyes. She wipes them away with the back of her
hand. “It’s now or never. Now that he’s given us a glimmer of hope,
you’re having second thoughts. That’s
not fair.”
“Who is
talking fair? He just threw us quite a
curveball. I didn’t sign up for us to
have someone else’s baby.”
Carly
gently touches his arm. “What does that
change for us? We will still have our
baby.” She shrugs, “And the other one? I’m okay with doing him that favour.”
“Really? You can be that nonchalant about carrying
someone else’s baby? What troubles me
is that we don’t actually know what he is going to do with the baby. Or whose it really is. I’m not comfortable with any of this.”
“You
heard him; the baby will be his.”
Gabe
starts to say something else.
Carly
puts her fingers to her lips, “No more.
If this is the price we have to pay to have our baby, then we are doing
it. Now, do you have anything else to
add?”
Gabe
knows her resolve, knows her mind is made up, and knows when to join the
team. “I guess not.”
Although reluctant to leave NYC Gabe soon enough finds a
house for them on Island Bluffs, a sleepy community on the Jersey shore. It’s a decrepit foreclosure that has sat
empty for 60 years, but Gabe feels unexplainably drawn to the place. Almost before he realizes it himself he has
torn the “for Sale” sign out of the front yard and began negotiating the
purchase and renovation. Even before
the first piece of furniture is off the moving van it becomes clear that the
town hierarchy does not want the Berk’s to move into their house. But why?
And, what are they trying to hide?
After receiving a speeding ticket (3 mph over) …
When I read the book description I was expecting a book
about a sinister doctor and his evil schemes ala “The Boys from Brazil”. I wasn’t disappointed – I got a little bit
of that. But, I also got SO much more.
“Island Bluffs” is a book that has several concurrent story lines, and
although that can get confusing and frustrating at times, in this book it works
brilliantly because they are so intricately intertwined that it flows
seamlessly. The writing is nice and
tight so even when Mr. Winter has to take a break and explain some point of
history (and there are a lot of historical facts in this book) it is woven so
skilfully into the narrative that the thread and pace of the story is never
interrupted. Well-done Mr. Winter!
The characters I enjoyed the most were those of Gabe Berk’s
father, Yehuda, and Buck, the handyman. Both
characters are octogenarians with tragic pasts that they have overcome with
grit and determination. They become
fast friends over the course of the book and supply the story with both
tenderness and some humour.
After receiving a note informing them Yehuda went to the
library:
“I hope
my father didn’t try to walk. It’s
pretty far.” Says Gabe.
“Does he
even know where the library is?”
“Getting
lost is not in my father’s vocabulary.
Even if he’s never been to a place, he somehow figures out where he
needs to be. He’s got like an internal
GPS or something.”
“Probably
it’s the amount of iron in his brain.
He inherently knows where the magnetic north is.”
“You
don’t believe that nonsense?” Gabe asks.
“How
else would you explain how men are able to find things better than women? It has to do with their chemical
imbalance. I’m the first to admit
that’s one defect that yields a benefit.”
“Maybe
that explains why old men get rusty and forgetful,” he concedes with a
cat-that-ate-the-canary grin.
There is no way to describe all the elements in this book
without having to put a huge “Spoiler Alert” banner at the top of this post,
which is something I always try to avoid.
Let me just say, taking some of the best elements from “The Boys From
Brazil”, “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming”, “Das Boot”,
“Poltergeist” and “The Notebook” and rolling them into one cohesive story would
come close to describing Mr. Winter’s page-turner.
The only negative comment I might have, and I am allowing
some leeway since I received an ARC, is that it needed a better version of
“Spellcheck”. Some of the errors were
almost inexcusable, such as spelling the major character’s name wrong
(Berk/Burk) and the little bit of dialogue that was written in German was
really bad. Errors I hope are rectified
in the final version.
Overall, I would not hesitate to recommend this book to
anyone interested in a page turning read.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR (from his website)
At first blush, Alan is quick to say that
he never intended to be a writer. But when he thinks about it, he's been
writing in one form or another, for his entire adult life. In college, he wrote
paper after paper for his history and literature courses. Professionally, he
edited a dental journal and wrote more than twenty scientific papers. That
still doesn't explain how a dentist came to write fiction!
It
started in 1982 when Alan made small talk with a patient about a sci-fi idea he
had. She thought the idea was so terrific, she urged him to write a movie
treatment about it. Alan dismissed her offhand. What did he know about writing
movies?
The patient persisted. Each time she would
visit his office, she would demand to see the finished movie treatment. Seeing
she was serious and relentless, Alan agreed to hand her a treatment. But how?
He had no clue where to start. Asking other patients for guidance, Alan was
introduced to a young screenwriter who agreed - for a fee - to write the
treatment. They worked together, produced a treatment, and shopped it around to
a number of studios. One studio took the idea (without permission or payment)
and turned Alan's treatment into a movie.
Still, Alan had no desire to write
fiction. That changed in 1985. That was the year that Alan began writing his
first novel, "Someone Else's Son," which was eventually published by
MasterMedia, Ltd.
While maintaining his periodontal
practice, Alan has continued to write since he first took up pen to paper,
although now he is very appreciative that his mother forced him to take typing
in summer school after his sophomore year of high school. Boys just didn't do
that back in the '60s, but it has been an invaluable skill over the years.
Alan and Lori live in his native New
Jersey. They have five children and five grandchildren.
OTHER BOOKS BY ALAN A. WINTER
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