BookTrib’s Bites: Where We’ve Been, Who We Become

(BookTrib) - “Over the Hills and Far Away” by Daniel Mack

John Merlan is nearing retirement with an irregular heartbeat, a dwindling roster of therapy clients and a growing suspicion that the modern world is far too eager to tell people how to live. Newly settled in Central Florida, he spends his days driving the back roads of the Lake Wales Ridge, talking with clients, researching local history and wondering what free will really means — and what we are supposed to do with it.

His questions become stranger as mysterious encounters blur the line between imagination and reality. Meanwhile, half a world away, a clandestine experiment is pursuing an astonishing possibility: if the human soul is the source of free will, could that freedom be eliminated altogether?

Funny, profane and philosophical, Daniel Mack’s “Over the Hills and Far Away” combines one man’s search for meaning with a much larger mystery about choice, control and what it means to be human.

Purchase at https://tinyurl.com/over-the-hills-daniel-mack.

“Dancing Through Seafoam” by Diane Skye Gropper

Poet Diane Skye Gropper explores the fleeting nature of life through a deeply personal and spiritual lens. Drawing on decades of studying Buddhism, Native American teachings and other traditions, she reflects on love, loss, past lives, healing, mortality and the connections that endure beyond a single lifetime.

The collection moves from intimate poems about family, grief and relationships into broader meditations on karma, free will, spiritual growth and humanity’s responsibility to one another and the planet. Some pieces tell vivid stories; others wrestle directly with questions of death, purpose and what we carry from one life into the next.

The title itself captures Gropper’s central image: life as a dance through seafoam, beautiful and fragile, appearing only briefly before disappearing. Yet throughout the collection, the soul’s journey continues, shaped by love, memory and the choices made along the way.

Purchase at https://tinyurl.com/dancing-through-seafoam.

“Hunting the Red Fox” by W. Kenneth Tyler Jr.

In 1942, Perry Barnes’ future is shaped by a teenage mistake with an ironic twist. Given the choice between conscription in the Army and a prison sentence for stealing jewelry, Perry opts for the former. He soon finds himself in a newly formed special operations unit, where he learns espionage, sabotage, lock picking, safe cracking — and the very skills that could someday make him a first-class jewel thief.

After the war, Perry’s adventures take him from stunt work in 1950s Hollywood to professional golf alongside legends like Ben Hogan and Arnold Palmer. Then he meets precious-gem investigator Sophia Toscana and becomes entangled in the theft of the famed Mecklenburg Diamond from an elusive master thief known as the Red Fox.

Blending historical fiction, spycraft, romance and irreverent humor, “Hunting the Red Fox” has earned a World’s Best Magazine Award for weaving adventure, espionage and redemption into historical fiction; an Independent Press Award for humor; and a NYC Big Book Award in the cross-genre category.

Purchase at https://tinyurl.com/hunting-the-red-fox.

“From the Cyclops Cave: A Braided Memoir” by Don Schofield

Poet Don Schofield looks back on a childhood marked by abandonment, instability and a deep hunger to belong. Raised by a succession of adults after his father left him in the care of strangers, Schofield carries those early wounds into adulthood — and eventually to Greece.

From a primitive hut on the island of Kýthnos, known locally as the Cyclops Cave, he begins revisiting the past. The memoir moves between his solitary life in the Cyclades and vivid scenes from 1950s California, allowing memory to surface in fragments: painful, tender and sometimes uncertain.

Written with a poet’s attention to image and place, Schofield’s memoir explores resilience, identity, family and the complicated work of understanding the people who shaped us. Ultimately, it is a moving account of learning to care for the child he once was.

Purchase at https://tinyurl.com/from-the-cyclops-cave.

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