Karl Myers
Volume 1 of the MYERS/BENTON CHRONICLES! The SAGA BEGINS! KINDLE SALE: $2.99!!!
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"An instantly immersive story of innocence lost and justice miscarried, Karl Myers is a patiently profound piece of 1950s fiction – a visceral, dark, and poignant drama, which offers a snapshot of a sinister time that America has yet to fully escape. Lee’s ability to drop a staggering blow with spare prose is impressive, and that compelling narrative voice makes the slow-burn storytelling a pleasure. A bold look at the lethal realities of ignorance and prejudice, this is a gripping and timely perod drama that echoes with critical and timely significance for contemporary readers." Self-Publishing Review
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Author's Notes from Karl Myers
Set in 1955 in Lewes on the Delaware Bay, the novel Karl Myers meets James Ellroy’s characterization of Noir as the wrong man and the wrong woman in perfect misalliance. It’s the nightmare of flawed souls with big dreams and the precise how and why of the all-time sure thing that goes bad ... it canonizes the inherent human urge toward self-destruction.
Former Marine and small-town police chief, Karl Myers, is one of four principal characters, each of whom hurtle headlong toward personal demolition; the others are Jerry and Vivian Peterman and their 12-year-old son, Greg.
Myers' marriage had dissolved before The War, and the life that has followed has been a life lived in the strange world of uniforms where a man, surrounded by hundreds of other souls, can find himself sucked into an unyielding vortex of loneliness, which threatens to drown his soul. Jerry’s abuse of Greg and Vivian, and Vivian’s rationalizations for accepting it, have created a dysfunctional family that is on the brink of collapse when there is a horrific accident.
Greg, along with the reader, knows what has happened, and the boy is fearful of his father’s certain retribution, but the boy successfully hides the truth from his family and from Myers until the chief resolves the mystery almost too late to save the victim’s sister, who is in a catatonic state caused by the trauma of witnessing the accident. Complicating Myers' challenges are the attitudes of too many White residents in Sussex County toward their Black neighbors--like Moses' African-American mother--attitudes that reflect the enduring White supremacist beliefs of the Confederacy; for example, schools and many public places in Sussex County, including hotel accommodations, are still segregated in 1955.
Another war has a bearing on the people of Lewes and the nation in 1955: the crucible of World War II produced a generation of heroes who understood manhood as a stoic duty that demanded complete intolerance of weakness. Many returned from battle eager to raise sons who would be prepared to bear the responsibilities of a hard world. Military service had forged warrior personas by replacing personal will with unquestioned obedience, the denial of which threatened pain and humiliation or worse.
Many veterans returned from the war believing their sons would benefit from the same demanding discipline that they had followed on the battlefields of Europe and the Pacific; unfortunately, unyielding expectations communicated through clenched teeth or china-rattling shouts, often reinforced with untempered smacks from calloused hands, or worse, a father's disdain applied to the soft underbelly of a child's' ego, spawned a cadre of boys in the 1950s who craved the approval of their fathers while being simultaneously terrified of them.
Karl Myers begins as a crime mystery that is less about "who done it" than it is about exploring the trauma of a world still reeling from the fallout of World War II in an American town that has yet to resolve the fallout of the Civil War.
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Wave and Whirlwind
Volume 2 of the Myers/Benton Chronicles KINDLE SALE: $3.99 for 2 novels in 1 book!!!
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Wave and Whirlwind explains and describes Myers' life-altering transition between the first forty-plus years of his life and the new life he begins in Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula in the Great Northwest. The novel also introduces Bill Benton and lays the foundation for PINCTADA.
Disillusioned with police work and with life in general, and driven by profound loneliness, Karl Myers heads west in the fall of 1955 in search of his wife, Laura Benton, who was last reported to be living in Port Townsend. In North Dakota during Myers' trek west, serendipity deposits him in a Williston tavern that escapees from a federal penitentiary have chosen to make a last stand. Myers kills one of the escapees and subdues the other two, one of whom is a Native American named Mato-sa.
Not wanting to be ensnared in the matter, Myers sneaks away before the arrival of the Williston Sheriff, and when he stops for a break along US 2 west of Williston, fate again intervenes when Reginald Rhodes stops to see if Myers needs assistance. Rhodes is a Marine brother Myers first met in 1942 at Montford Point, where Myers was a DI for the first African-Americans who were recruited into the Marines during World War II. Rhodes joins Myers on the trek to PT, and as have others before them, Myers and Rhodes work at the Town Tavern in PT in exchange for bunks upstairs.
Upon his arrival in PT, Myers finds Laura and discovers that he has a seventeen-year-old son, Bill Benton. In the days that follow, Myers and Rhodes begin to grow roots and relationships in their new town. Rhodes falls in love with Mirabelle Charles, a beautiful, angelic, and industrious Klallam woman. Myers has to deal with the fact that Laura, having fostered a story that Myers had died in the War, has married a wealthy Seattle surgeon. Fate again intervenes: the US Marshal’s Service has placed Mato-Sa in an extra-procedural, witness protection situation, and because of his previous experience as an officer of the law, Myers becomes unofficially immersed in solving murders that have chilling connections to Mato-Sa, Laura, and to Mirabelle.
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Cover of Wave and Whirlwind
PINCTADA
Volume 3 of the Myers/Benton Chronicles KINDLE SALE: $4.99 for 2 novels in 1 book!!!
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PINCTADA is an epic tale of two Americans in their late teens who run away from the puritanical mores of small-town, 1950's America aboard a stolen yawl in search of a liberating Paradise; instead, they land in a vestigial, libertine world of fang and claw that scrapes away their last trappings of adolescent innocence.
Set beginning in 1956, PINCTADA is an epic tale told in a duology of novels that are intended to be read as a single work, an epic coming-of-age story about two Americans in their late teens—Bill Benton (Karl Myer's son) and Brittany Alistair "Bambi" Macey—who sail to French Polynesia aboard a stolen yawl. The novel describes the trials and tribulations of the tumultuous months that follow, which erase what remains of Bill's and Bambi's adolescent innocence.
Under the mentorship of Oliana Teriierooiterai, a Marquesan Chieftess on Hiva Oa, Bill and Bambi learn to cope with a world where the only restraints to satisfying one's appetites are consent and imagination. The inclusion of significant doses of greed and betrayal, a touch of cannibalism, and a beautiful and faithful Mahu – a third gender person who becomes both friend and lover – creates a story set in a world that is far different from the America that Bill and Bambi have left behind, but there remains a greater world to which they must return, a world where challenges are resolved by fate, courage, perseverance, and strategic returns.
TALEFLICK has characterized Bill and Bambi’s adventures as having “the hindsight and openness of 2020 — the two main characters are able to fully explore their sexuality in a unique, fresh, and nonjudgmental way. The islands they visit are freeing and juxtaposed with 1956 American puritan culture, (which) provides a refreshing story with fantastic twists and turns."
PINCTADA is a novel that a reader can pick up and consume at length or in small bites because the characters and their stories will not leave your mind no matter the length of the interim. It is a perfect story to have downloaded on your device for those moments when there is time to kill (e.g. in a doctor's waiting room, awaiting a friend at a bar, et al), or to have the book waiting for you in trade paperback format on your nightstand.
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Cover of PINCTADA
Consummate Confidences
Volume 4 of the MYERS/BENTON CHRONICLES
Consummate Confidences (the novel is currently being written) provides a backstory for a future novel that will explore the time in 1965 when Karl Myers returns to his hometown to introduce his son, Bill Benton, to Bill's families: the Martinellis and the Bentoglios.
Consummate Confidences begins in 1957 Port Townsend, after Brittany "Bambi" Macey has returned from French Polynesia with a toddler (Becca Macey) in tow, having run off from PT 18 months earlier with Bill Benton, who is Becca's father. Myers is living with Mirabelle Rhodes, Myer's murdered Marine brother's (Reginald Rhodes) wife, and is teaching at the high school, but his police experience back East leads the local police chief to ask him for help in solving the murder of a young woman. The investigation uncovers crimes linked to a clandestine clique of youths whose secretive behaviors defy PT’s puritanical mores. Ironically, another relationship is simultaneously arising among Mirabelle, Myers, and Bambi, which also defies those puritanical mores and becomes even more problematic when Bill Benton (having been presumed dead at sea) reappears.
Complicating murder investigations and burgeoning relationships is the intrusion of the Baltimore Crew into events in PT, which are not resolved for six years until Bill — surprise heir to a fortune upon his return to PT — grows into a young man who is sufficiently experienced to use the power of sharply-honed business acumen and wealth to challenge — with Myers' support — the Gambino Family's control of the Baltimore waterfront.
Consummate Confidences is a work of historical fiction describing characters and events that are concurrent with the period in time when New York's Gambino crime family's control of the "Baltimore Crew" is being solidified. As historical fiction, some historic events are memorialized; however, all other events are products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Consummate Confidences is a double entendre: a phrase open to two interpretations, one of which is often risqué. In the case of Lee's novels, the interpretations of "consummate confidences" are first, a phrase that identifies a thing: consummate confidences are secrets shared between two or more people that are perfect secrets because they are secrets among the conspirators that are taken to the grave. The second interpretation is a phrase that describes an action; in this case the action is demonstrating skill and flair in creating perfect shared secrets. It is the author's belief that — to varied but significant degrees beyond the lives each of us live in the light of day — all humans lead closeted internal lives, about which we create external lives that intentionally blind the inquisitive eyes of our families, associates, friends, and neighbors. This means we all live external lives — to one degree or another — that deny significant aspects of who we really are, which is the emotional origin of loneliness, that void a soul feels when surrounded by others. It is this loneliness that drives us to search for intimacy with another soul, the search for individuals with whom we can share the secrets of who we are and what we may have done without fear of rejection. Seeking intimacy is a search for the person (or persons) with whom we consummate confidences. It is humanity's almost certain and inevitable failure to achieve consummate confidences that provides the fodder authors use to create engaging novels and tell-all memoirs.
24 Minutes
Volume Last: the Myers/Benton Chronicles KINDLE SALE: $2.99!!!
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24 Minutes is a literary analog to a reality documentary of the inner thoughts and outer experiences of an elderly man's personal journey, recounted in first person as seen through the lens of the author. At 77 and on the days bracketing the contentious 2016 American Presidential Election, Bill Benton knows full well that he does not know the meaning of life, but he is determined to live whatever life he may have left — be it 24 minutes or 24 years — as though there are only 24 minutes remaining.
The story is set in and around Lewes, Delaware. First settled in 1631, the sea and Lewes are inseparable not only due to proximity, but because the town’s existence and longevity are due to the pre-eminence of the Delaware pilots that have been navigating shipping up and down the Delaware Bay and River estuary since before the American Revolution.
Like the town, Billy has been intertwined with the sea his entire life, but his life has also been entangled in relationships with significant women who complicate his attempts to unravel what should be important at the end of one’s life, including understanding his role as a father, as a companion, and as the richest man in town, and understanding how to best apply the power his significant wealth provides for the common good.
24 Minutes is Volume Last in the Myers/Benton Chronicles.
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Full cover of 24 Minutes
The Helper
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(Note: The Helper was significantly rewritten in 2022)
"This genre-defying novel will leave readers with scarcely a chance to breathe, as the broad kaleidoscope of narrative threads clarifies into a thrilling conclusion. With vivid metaphors and a lyrical, reality-catching edge to the prose, Lee’s narrative voice has the practiced grace of a veteran author, making the book both insightful and exhilarating for a wide range of readers. From start to finish, this is a carefully crafted thriller, tapping into psychology, history, metaphysics, and the unexplored shadows of the human experience, helped along by dark but gut-wrenchingly good storytelling." Self-Publishing Review
From the SPR Review:
"Author Jeff Lee plumbs the depths of human darkness and resilience in his gritty, visionary novel, The Helper, an intersecting tale of disparate lives in the deadly orbit of fate. Scrawled across the endless canvas of New York City and far beyond to realms past reality in the Connecticut countryside, this is a spiraling story of redemption, destiny, and survival.
"After the high society son of a minister is attacked by a gang of homophobic skinheads, his axe-wielding rescuers bring him home like a wounded animal, across state lines, where he embarks on a journey of healing and self-discovery he never expected. Bound inexplicably to Martha and Uci, through visions and a soul-linked instinct, David is a compelling and complicated figure, battling demons of shame and guilt, with a lovestruck iron-worker for a guide.
"Martha is an imposing and enigmatic character, with a streak of compassion and curiosity that makes her immediately engaging. Uci is a similarly unique slice of magic, seeming to flit between dreams and reality, and the dynamic of matriarchal solidarity between the two is empowering and refreshing. Together, they seek out the maniacal subject of their dark dream world, where they must stop a crusade of evil haunting the most innocent souls of Manhattan. This genre-defying novel will leave readers with scarcely a chance to breathe, as the broad kaleidoscope of narrative threads clarifies into a thrilling conclusion.
"The subtle attention to detail speaks volumes about the research and preparation that went into this book; the nuance of Native American philosophy, ritual, and tradition is compelling, adding another powerful layer of meaning to an already theme-packed read. Lee’s voice effortlessly slips into other cultural backgrounds and contexts, from high rises in Central Park West to the haunted bedrooms of childhood memory, seamlessly bouncing from one plot piece to the next with a true sense of believability. This is a rare quality in a writer and is clear evidence of his keen eye for intimate character development.
"With vivid metaphors and a lyrical, reality-catching edge to the prose, Lee’s narrative voice has the practiced grace of a veteran author, tapping into the desperate sickness of a murderous zealot and the ancient wisdom of a mystical healer with equal ease, while the world-building is immediate and immersive. The author also dissects the quiet insecurities of writers desperate for validation, along with the overlapping visceral danger and soul-freeing liberation of the LGBT experience. There are a number of other important psychological conditions, emotional dynamics, and traumatic blocks explored through these characters, from repression and PTSD to parental failings and grief processing, making the book both insightful and exhilarating for a wide range of readers.
"From start to finish, this is a carefully crafted thriller, tapping into psychology, history, metaphysics, and the unexplored shadows of the human experience, helped along by dark but gut-wrenchingly good storytelling."
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Cover of the 2nd Edition
Tuscarora
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I took the above photo of the Tuscarora Valley looking toward the southwest in the late fall of 1998, around the time the protagonist in Tuscarora reunites with the love of his life. Situated in Perry County, not many miles away but decades removed from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the Tuscarora Valley as seen in the photograph had not changed from the first time I had visited the valley nearly forty years before.
My father's family has roots in Perry County, and one of those roots is a family—the Rinehart's—that had a farm in this valley. Going to the Tuscarora Valley, for me, is like going back in time: when I took the photo, there was only one traffic light in a county of 556 square miles with a population of 65,000 souls. Perhaps it was those roots that compelled me to craft a novel—Angel in the Valley—that I self-published via Xlibris, of which a small number of copies were sold via the marketing avenues available to me at that time. I cannot express the thrill I felt at holding, for the first time, a hardbound copy of a book that I had written, and that thrill ultimately changed my lifelong dabbling at writing into what might be described as a near obsession.
Seven courses in a creative writing master's program at West Chester University proved a personal boon in improving my writing skills, and they cast a bright light on the failings of Angel in the Valley. Because I chose to focus at the turn of the Millennia on a sure career, comfortable remuneration, and a certain pension instead of the uncertain promise of a middle-aged man in search of a writing career, Angel was relegated to a back burner; nonetheless, in 2014, Angel re-emerged as an entrée that had shed 60,000 words and contained tempered graphic descriptions, changed characters, and altered subplots. Tuscarora had been born.
In Tuscarora, the life of a young man is turned upside down in 1970 when he is implicated in a murder. A wanted man, he escapes to the Appalachian Trail where he spends decades among the high ridges and valleys of the Appalachians as an anonymous exile known only as The Walker. Fate ultimately returns him to the valley of the Tuscarora where he reconnects with two women who loved him when he was sixteen.
Carolyn Mason has become a cold and calculating Lieutenant Governor who, in 2002, will be running for the Governorship of Pennsylvania, which she sees as a stepping stone to the Presidency in 2008. Her gubernatorial run is under the tutelage of a Machiavellian political operative who explains to Carolyn why he is seeking redemption after having been associated with a corrupt President: “I want the White House. I want to feel the power again, power that weighs on one’s shoulders like a shroud of heavy metal. I want to be in a room where a single word sends billions of dollars flowing or mobilizes armies. I want to be in the middle of a media crowd that hovers endlessly with the hope it will hear a single phrase that might make a headline. There is nothing like it, and I want to feel it again.”
The second woman, Sue Reinhart, has existed in Walker’s mind as a decades-long dream until he stumbles back into her life, a life challenged by the expectations that blue-collar women are expected to fulfill in what is a man’s world in the Pennsylvania Appalachians at the turn of the Millennium, expectations that are at the core of Sue's admission: “I’m talking about what should happen between two people who tell the world they love each other by being married, and that doesn’t mean going through the motions, pretending you love somebody. I was a fraud. I lived a lie, and I did it because I was scared. It doesn’t justify what I did, but I was scared … scared of being alone, of not being able to make it on my own.”
Love, jealousy and resentment, power, murder and redemption are the passions that unfold in the rich tapestry that is Tuscarora.
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