BookTrib Spotlights Four New Books on Free Will, Memory, and Adventure

(BookTrib) presents a diverse quartet of new books that explore the depths of human experience, from the philosophical to the personal. In "Over the Hills and Far Away" by Daniel Mack, readers meet John Merlan, a therapist nearing retirement with an irregular heartbeat and a growing suspicion that modern society is too eager to dictate how people should live. Newly settled in Central Florida, he drives the back roads of the Lake Wales Ridge, researching local history and pondering free will. His questions intensify as mysterious encounters blur imagination and reality, while a clandestine experiment half a world away pursues an astonishing possibility: if the human soul is the source of free will, could that freedom be eliminated altogether? Described as funny, profane, and philosophical, Mack’s novel combines one man’s search for meaning with a larger mystery about choice and control.

Poet Diane Skye Gropper’s "Dancing Through Seafoam" explores the fleeting nature of life through a spiritual lens, drawing on decades of studying Buddhism, Native American teachings, and other traditions. The collection reflects on love, loss, past lives, healing, and mortality, moving from intimate poems about family and grief to broader meditations on karma, free will, and humanity’s responsibility to one another and the planet. The title captures Gropper’s central image: life as a dance through seafoam, beautiful and fragile, yet the soul’s journey continues, shaped by love, memory, and choices. Meanwhile, W. Kenneth Tyler Jr.’s "Hunting the Red Fox" follows Perry Barnes, whose 1942 choice between conscription and prison leads him to a special operations unit where he learns espionage, sabotage, and lock picking—skills that later entangle him in the theft of the Mecklenburg Diamond. Blending historical fiction, spycraft, romance, and humor, the book has earned multiple awards. Finally, Don Schofield’s "From the Cyclops Cave: A Braided Memoir" recounts a childhood of abandonment and instability, as he revisits his past from a primitive hut on the Greek island of Kýthnos. Written with a poet’s attention to image and place, the memoir explores resilience, identity, and the complicated work of understanding family.