Literary Fiction
Date Published: August 26, 2020 (ebook); September 22, 2020 (print)
Publisher: Propertius Press
Tolan has always let her mother have one secret — how she got that
scar on her face — playing along with her mother’s game of
inventing outlandish tales to explain the wound away. But when she finds a
manuscript on her mother’s computer that promises to reveal the true
story, Tolan only hesitates for a moment before curiosity compels her to
read on.
She’s hoping for answers, but instead, she finds more mysteries
tucked away in her mother’s past. Her mother appears to be associated
with Bo, a feisty photojournalist who flies to Cuba in pursuit of a story
and becomes embedded with Castro’s rebels, but Tolan can’t quite
work out their connection. She’s more clear about the relationship
between her mother and Michael, a man twelve years her senior. They bond
over their shared outcast status, and their friendship quickly becomes
intimate, but the relationship antagonizes the self-appointed moral
watchdogs in their small town, who start to convert their threats into
action. Tolan is pretty sure that Michael is her father. Her mother told her
he died years ago, but the book suggests their story had a different
ending.
Almost overnight, everything Tolan thought she knew about herself and her
family has changed. She wants answers, but to find them, she risks
destroying her closest relationships.
About the Author
Ciahnan Darrell’s short stories and essays have appeared in several
journals, most recently in The Columbia Review, and his story, ‘What
Remains,’ was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He is a contributing editor at
Marginalia, an international review of literature along the nexus of
history, theology, and religion. He holds an MDiv from the University of
Chicago, an MA in philosophy and the arts from Stony Brook University, and
an MA and PhD in comparative literature from the University at Buffalo. A
Lifetime of Men is his first novel.
Contact Links
Goodreads: Author profile / Book page
Purchase Links
Directly from the publisher (best value)
