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| Category: Fiction |
(requires Adobe Reader)
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| About the Book | |
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Only days before the final signing of a security pact between his people and the new settlers from the Massachusetts Bay Company, Mantoos is attacked by Native Americans of another tribe. He is knocked unconscious, and he is left in the ocean to die. The year is 1632. Jack Johnson, philosophically at odds with his corporate employer, engages in a “therapeutic hobby”: lobstering. A rapidly moving storm overtakes him while at sea. He is thrown overboard and knocked unconscious. The year is 2009. Mantoos and Jack Johnson are washed ashore on Owanu Island, a place that neither recognizes. They awake to discover that they live in the same geographical area, but they are separated by three hundred years. When Jack hears of the pending security pact, he warns Mantoos of certain disaster for his people. Jack is rescued from Owanu Island, but Mantoos hides from the 21st century rescuers. Jack is thought mad as he pleads for his rescuers to find Mantoos. On the mainland, Jack finds research evidence of Mantoos and his people. In doing so, he encounters a strange man named Leonard Scoggins. Scoggins is curator of the crypt lying beneath the town’s Congregational Church. Despite Scoggins’ evasive efforts, Jack discovers a gravestone with John Blackstone’s name on it. It has a curious epitaph and the date of 1632. Scoggins keeps Jack away from the other grave sites. Jack evades healthcare professionals concerned about his mental health, and he returns to Owanu island, which appears to be the gateway between the two historical periods. Jack goes back in time to help Mantoos resist the agreement with the Massachusetts Bay Company. In doing so, Mantoos is killed by John Blackstone, the primary colonist negotiator. Jack plots revenge, and he kills John Blackstone a day later. Unknown to Jack is that Blackstone’s half-brother is Leonard Scoggins, a leader of the colonial settlement. While pursuing his brother’s murderer in the 17th century, Scoggins’ ship is wrecked at Owanu Island during a violent storm; he becomes stuck in the late 20th century. He is seen by all to be an eerie, strange man, but he becomes integrated into the Congregational Church founded by his Puritan peers. For 40 years he secretly searches for what the history books call a “strange white man of unknown origins.” As curator of the crypt beneath the Church, Scoggins exhumes his brother’s body, and he supposedly finds a modern-style bullet in the colonial casket. Jack’s “delusions” from his accident, as reported in the newspaper, convince Scoggins that Jack is the man he is searching for. He plots revenge. While Jack is missing for the second time on Owanu Island, his wife, Sharon, on the advice of Jack’s psychiatrist, examines some old documents. She begins to put together some historical data that she thinks solves the puzzle. She helps save Jack from Scoggins. Apparently free from his dangerous adventures, Jack uncovers a treasure chest, which Mantoos had recovered from a wrecked pirate vessel. Mantoos had hid the treasure from his people to avoid unleashing uncontrollable greed. In the chest, along with Aztec gold taken from the Spanish ship, Jack finds the name of the man who financed the privateer vessel: Leonard Scoggins. Scoggins’ spirit returns to claim his treasure. Jack refuses a pact with satan and escapes with the treasure, a treasure which launches a crusade aimed at making organizations more responsive to people and nature. In the final chapter, Jack revisits the crypt underneath the Congregational Church. Next to the gravesite of John Blackstone, he finds a gravesite for Leonard Scoggins, a gravesite with epitaphs from both the 17th and 21st centuries.
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| About the Author | |
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John Wasserman has over 30 years of experience in the corporate world and in academia. He has Masters Degrees in Sociology (Columbia University) and Business Administration (University of Hartford). He received his Bachelors Degree at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. He is married and the father of two daughters. |