Post Apocalyptic Bliss

I have always had a perverse fascination with what comes after, and the different possibilities of what causes the end of life as we pretend to know it.  Elegy Beach : a book of the Change by Steven R. Boyett has a novel precept. The laws of Physics have changed.  Magic, what people can figure out about it, rules the day.  Most things mechanical just don't work anymore.  The story begins a full generation after the change.  The truly horrific stuff, is for the most part over, though there remain plenty of bad guys making mayhem, as bad guys are wont to do.  There are some interesting folks in this story, a unicorn, Ariel, who has spent entirely too much time with humans. A father, Peter, who walked through Hell for years before landing in a, somewhat safe, beach community on the California coast and stopping there to raise his son Fred in a community.  Ariel ©1983 is the story of Ariel and Peter's journey in the early years after the change.

The story is, at it's heart, a coming of age story, Fred's, and an exemplary one at that.  It has all the makings of a good heroic myth and the final pages, oh the final pages, be still my heart. The final pages are capable of calming the disturbed (I feel much better).  Both books are standing alone stories in their own right, but, I am now going to read Ariel and get the back story for Elegy Beach the writing is just too good to leave it unread.  The writer knows prose and has a human heart.

Enjoy,
Richard

Music in my life at the moment.
Gretchen Peter's wonderful song, Revival.
Covered on Jimmy LaFave's CD Blue Nightfall Track #1
and
Brother Paul Thorn's Mission Temple Fireworks Stand by Paul Thorn.
The title cut Mission Temple Fireworks Stand
has one of my all time favorite song quotes I paraphrase often.
"...bottle rockets, two for a dollar, salvation is free."
Paul Thorn started out as a boxer but retired the effort after
spending six rounds in the ring with Roberto Duran, hence
the title of his first CD Hammer & Nail, he seemed not
to want to be the nail anymore.