John Mantooth is one of those authors, and as he did in his short story collection Shoebox Train Wreck, he walks this line in The Year of the Storm, showing us BOTH the worst and best in people, and showing us the magic and power of belief.
When Danny's mother and autistic sister disappear in the middle of a storm, life tilts into a dark, off-kilter world in which he's always waiting for them to return while his father grows ever more distant, bottling up his grief. After the police searches are long called off and everyone - including his father - has given up hope, Danny persists in his belief alone, convinced, somehow, that his mother and sister are still out there, somewhere, stabbed also by guilt that it's his fault they disappeared to begin with.
When a mysterious man named Walter Pike - a man with secrets and a tainted past - returns to his hometown, Danny's belief that his mother and sister can be found grows, because Walter hints at mysterious, nebulous things: that we understand so little about the world around us, that there are other worlds only just a step - or a slip - away. And despite the fact that his father and the Sheriff maintain Pike is a crazy, dangerous old man, despite his best friend's doubts, Danny follows Pike on a journey into the past, into a world that exists just next to our own...one he'll need every ounce of courage and belief he has to survive.
The Year of the Storm is a meta-physical "coming of age" tale that hits all the right notes, both light and dark. With ease, Mantooth flips back and forth between two first person narratives - Danny's in the present and Walter Pike's in the past, when he's Danny's age - and the novel's back cover description simply doesn't do it justice. The story is far more layered, smoothly revealing secrets about Pike and Danny's mother and others along the way. Also, the prose is smooth and a delight to read, making The Year of the Storm a novel not to be missed.
Visit John Mantooth's website. Buy the paperback or the ebook.
Kevin Lucia is an Associate Fiction
Editor for The Horror Channel and his podcast "Horror
101" is featured monthly on Tales to Terrify. His short
fiction has appeared in several venues. He’s currently finishing
his Creative Writing Masters Degree at Binghamton University, he
teaches high school English and lives in Castle Creek, New York with
his wife and children. He is the author of Hiram Grange & The
Chosen One, Book Four of The Hiram Grange Chronicles and
his first short story collection, Things Slip Through
is forthcoming November 2013 from Crystal Lake Publishing. He’s
currently working on his first novel.
