Book Blurb:
1942: Twenty-four year old Bernhardt Lang is swept along by the currents of war, until an unexpected ally helps him live a life of his own making, in a place he could never have imagined himself existing.
1965: Twelve year old Joseph Holliman is drowning in a life no one should have to endure. When he crosses paths with Frank Gardner, everything he thinks he knows about the meaning of family is changed.
Between the Clouds and the River is a journey from the sands of North Africa to the snow-capped mountains of Montana and British Columbia, a compelling and emotional tale of deception, revelation, identity, and belonging that reminds us all that love is the only truth.
Book Buy Link: coming soon! https://www.davemasonwrites.com/
Author Bio:
Born in England and raised in Canada, Dave Mason is an internationally recognized graphic designer and a cofounder of a number of software companies. His first novel, EO-N, is the recipient of twenty-one literary awards including the Hemingway Award for 20th Century Wartime Fiction, and has been acquired for film and television. He divides his time between Chicago, Illinois, and Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.
Editorial Review:
In Between the Clouds and the River, Paul is speaking.
“Maybe I don’t know who you and John are,” he said. “But I know what you are.”
Dave Mason catches us up with his gritty, elegant prose and carries us away, following the ultimately intertwined fortunes of Bernhardt Lang, a young soldier caught up in the dying stages of WWII in North Africa, John Steele, a former prisoner of war on the run in the rural US, and Frank Gardner, an aging Canadian. His construction is clever, multi-layered, and at times deliberately obscuring, but what is never obscured is that these men are thoughtful and generous, growing into strength and wisdom as the tragedy and joy of life unfolds.
Mason’s prose is masterful. He has a singular voice which takes the convention of the comma splice and throws it away to devastating effect. At first the long single sentences, almost paragraphs, may feel slightly daunting, but stick with them. They ebb and flow like the tide, sweeping you along on a wave of delectable, distinctive description and cleverly camouflaged life commentary. On Bernhardt’s capture he writes:
“Like dust covered sheep dogs with tin helmets and bayonets, about two dozen loudly barking British soldiers had eventually rounded up Bernhardt and the others and pointed them in the same direction, and within an hour’s plodding march roughly eastwards under a blistering sun, they’d been joined by what looked to Bernhardt to be a few hundred more battered and downcast German and Italian prisoners.”
Whilst his subsequent shipwreck is described thus:
“On serene swells littered with bits of paper and clothing and cigarette packages and all manner of indeterminate odds and ends, men floated here and there, dead and alive and halfway between, no longer captors or prisoners, no longer Americans or Germans, just pathetic human specks bobbing on a vast nothingness, the sea their only enemy now.”
As Bernhardt Lang’s story unfolds, Frank Gardner is introduced, a man concerned for the welfare of others, in particular that of Joseph Holliman, a young boy whose fundamentalist Christian father is the brutal headmaster of the local school. Now Mason follows the fortunes of both Bernhardt and Frank in parallel. As Bernhardt’s story morphs into that of John Steele, who meets and falls quietly in love with a young woman named Helen, and Frank struggles to protect the clever, damaged Joseph from his own father, we are shown what the three men are, but never quite fully who they are. Their histories, although wholly entangled, are also partially hidden. Frank himself sums this up:
“History, he thought, is where facts go to become fiction.”
Mason’s text explores a number of themes: the nature of cruelty, and friendship, and how history shapes and transforms us. It does this not only through the unfolding of Bernhardt’s, John’s, and Frank’s stories, but via both Frank and Joseph’s exploration of literature. It says to us, we are what we read, so read well. When Joseph first discovers the joy of literature (it has been denied him because of his father’s fundamentalism) Mason writes:
“Cautiously and carefully, Joseph bent the worn front cover back and leafed through the first few pages.
“By the time his heavy eyelids asserted their irresistible will some ninety-five minutes later, he’d been in a world he’d never dreamed might exist, where they spoke in a way he’d never heard. He’d met a boy named Tom, and another named Huck, and they’d played a prank on a man named Jim. And right up to the moment that his thoughts had been consumed by the dark, Joseph had still been with them.”
On the nature of cruelty, it shows how some are raised in it and some revel in it, while others are driven to it. Driven to brutalize a helpless work horse named Betty Grable by his own uncontrollable circumstances, Bernhardt breaks down.
“In that moment of crazed fury, Bernhardt accidentally looked into Betty Grable’s eyes, and he suddenly understood that she was looking back at him. Instantly, he felt as if he’d become an observer instead of an active participant in the events unfolding in the mountain scrub. Through tears of rage, the reflection of his own insanity overwhelmed him, and he slumped to his knees, soul-deep anguish and sorrow and regret brought powerfully and unavoidably to the surface by her confused, pleading gaze.”
A discussion on friendship runs:
“Can’t choose your friends either.”
“Huh?” Joseph looked up.
“I don’t know about you,” said Frank, “but I never figured it was up to me. From time to time, someone showed up in my life and something just, I don’t really know, something just clicked. And that was that. We were friends. Or more than friends. Hasn’t happened too often, but when it has, it has.”
This perception of choice is returned to in several places, explored, then packed away and a new angle, a different insight, sought. Mason’s text is rich and powerful, he deals with big concepts in a way that never overwhelms, never lectures. When one young character is driven to extreme measures by the cruelty of the school headmaster, we find Frank remarking to a police officer:
“Hey, Whitmore,” he said. “I know I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but the things people die from ain’t necessarily the things that kill them.”
Mason’s narrative and craft allows Between the Clouds and the River to explore the nature of what it means to be human through life’s constant changes. It examines love of all kinds, and violence from the small and personal all the way to dropping atomic bombs. It is a clever, thought-provoking piece of writing, which keeps you awake, turning pages, long into the dark.
*****
“Between the Clouds and the River” by Dave Mason receives 5 stars and the “Highly Recommended” award of excellence from The Historical Fiction Company
Award:
To have your historical novel editorially reviewed and/or enter the HFC Book of the Year contest, please visit www.thehistoricalfictioncompany.com/book-awards/award-submission
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