Lee Matthew Goldberg
Thriller / Mystery
A man wakes up in present-day Alaskan wilderness with no idea who he is, nothing on him save an empty journal with the date 1898 and a mirror. He sees another man hunting nearby, astounded that they look exactly alike. After following this other man home, he witnesses a wife and child that brings forth a rush of memories of his own wife and child, except he’s certain they do not exist in modern times—but from his life in the late 1800s. After recalling his name is Wyatt, he worms his way into his doppelganger Travis Barlow’s life. Memories become unearthed the more time he spends, making him believe that he’d been frozen after coming to Alaska during the Gold Rush and that Travis is his great-great grandson. Wyatt is certain gold still exists in the area and finding it with Travis will ingratiate himself to the family, especially with Travis’s wife Callie, once Wyatt falls in love. This turns into a dangerous obsession affecting the Barlows and everyone in their small town, since Wyatt can’t be tamed until he also discovers the meaning of why he was able to be preserved on ice for over a century.
A meditation on love lost and unfulfilled dreams, The Ancestor is a thrilling page-turner in present day Alaska and a historical adventure about the perilous Gold Rush expeditions where prospectors left behind their lives for the promise of hope and a better future. The question remains whether it was all worth the sacrifice….
Praise for THE ANCESTOR:
“Lee Matthew Goldberg is an animal—there is no other way to say it. His prose is heavyweight ambitious, as visceral as a sweaty-toothed dog at your throat. He evokes Robert Louis Stevenson as much as he does a modern thriller novelist. And I’ll be honest: I expected a crime novel, but I got a spell-binding epic, an epistolary revelation, a tale as rich as a paying gold mine. The Ancestor is more than a novel. It’s an ode to the rich tradition of adventure storytelling…seasoned with ample spice of love and violence and greed.” —Matt Phillips, author of Countdown and Know Me from Smoke
“In The Ancestor, Lee Matthew Goldberg masterfully weaves together a story involving family and violence set against the backdrop of an unforgiving Alaska of both past and present.” —Andrew Davie, author of Pavement and Ouroboros
“From the icy opening battle of man vs. wolf, you feel yourself in the hands of a master storyteller and that feeling never lets up.” —SJ Rozan, bestselling author of Paper Son
“This thrilling novel is rich in descriptions of the vast, snowy, and deadly wilderness of Alaska; it ably captures the type of person who chases gold.” —Foreword Reviews
“A story that blends the familiar and the supernatural in a manner that calls Stephen King’s work to mind. That said, Goldberg’s book possesses a flavor all its own—a distinctive mélange of the sincere and the strange.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Beautifully written, and capturing the unforgiving grit of Gold Rush Alaska, Lee Matthew Goldberg’s The Ancestor is a thrilling page-turner with an ache in its heart. I’m a huge fan.” —Roz Nay, author of Hurry Home and Our Little Secret
“A suspenseful historical thriller.” —Indie Reader
“One of the year’s best thrillers. Blake Crouch fans will love Goldberg’s Alaskan opus.” —BestThrillers
Amazon → https://amzn.to/31Oays9
Down and Out Books → https://downandoutbooks.com/bookstore/goldberg-ancestor/
One eye open, the other frozen shut. He
knows what an eye is, but that other “I” remains a mystery. Mind scooped out
and left in ice. Words are hunted, slowly return. Blue sky, that’s what he
sees. The sun twinkling like a diamond. Tundra, there’s another recalled word.
Packed snow on all sides as if the world succumbed to white. The air a powerful
whistle. A breeze blows, not a friend but a penance. It passes right through
and chills to the core, this enemy wind. Limbs atrophied, no idea when they
last moved. Boil of a sun thaws and prickles. Tiny spiders swinging from leg
hairs, biting into flesh. He cries out but there is no sound. For it feels like
he hasn’t spoken in centuries.
Back of
throat tastes of metal. Blood trapped in phlegm. A cough sends a splatter of
red against the stark land, a streak in the form of a smile. When was the last
time he ate? His stomach growls in agony, a good sign. Organs working, or at
least attempting to work. His one eye scans to the left and the right, no sign
of anyone, not even an animal. No chance for a savior or sustenance.
He gums his
jaw, the first inkling of movement. Aware of his scraggily beard coated in
frost. Crystals spiral from his
chin, collect in his lap. Now he sees his hands, luckily in gloves except they
are a thin brown leather, rather useless. Bones crack as he maneuvers to remove
the gloves. Fingers tremble once hit with fresh air and numbness subsides.
Massages his legs, gets the blood flowing, an injection of life. The spiders
accelerate and then relent, toes wiggle, and he sits up. Around his neck rests
a notebook and a fountain pen, the tip crusted in flakes. He feels an object in
a front pocket and pulls out a silver compact mirror, the back embroidered with
floral patterns, ladylike. This is not my
mirror, he decides, but then has a more important realization. Who am I? With trembling hands, he
brings the mirror up to his face for a glance.
The
reflection of a stranger. All beard save for some features that emerge. A
bulbous but authoritative nose, green eye flecked with gold, a mane of dark
hair cascading to his shoulders. Handsome in a grizzled way. Shades of a bear
in the roundness of his cheeks and a wolf in his stare.
“I am…,”
his lips try to say, but there is no answer. Often one can wake from a dream
and the dream seems real for a moment, but a sense of self never vanishes.
Whoever he was has been long gone, unlikely to return anytime soon. At least
while he remains freezing in the wilderness.
I must make it out of here.
Welcome to the blog! The first page is perhaps one of the most important pages in the whole book. It’s what draws the reader into the story. Why did you choose to begin your book this way?
A man wakes up with amnesia in the Alaskan wilderness. The readers experience the same confusion and fear that he does right away.
In the course of writing your book, how many times would you say that first page changed and for what reasons?
A lot, often times you need to finish the whole book and then go back to writing the first page, so it wound up being one of the last things I did.
Was there ever a time after the book was published that you wished you had changed something on the first page?
No, I love it the way it is.
What advice can you give to aspiring authors to stress how important the first page is?
It’s so important. You have to grab an agent, or an editor right away because if they are not interested in the first page they might not read any further. Make sue to hook them.
WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:
Website: http://www.leematthewgoldberg.comTwitter: http://www.twitter.com/LeeMatthewG
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leemgol
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53472461-the-ancestor
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