William Moake

Time is but a Stream William Moake

The illusory nature of time haunts the eccentric and troubled characters in these eleven unconventional short stories.

In ?The Tooth of Buddha? an American businessman on his first trip to Asia meets a mysterious woman who inspires him to confront the possibility of his own re-incarnation. A desperate youth, adrift in the Florida Everglades, redeems himself through an ancient legend, ?Lost Man?s Hummock.? An Air Force veteran overcomes his amnesia to recall his bittersweet affair with a married servicewoman during the Vietnam war in ?Remembering Terry.? The ?Untidy Places? are more mental than physical for a tourist who awakes at a campsite to find his wife missing. An American ex-patriate in ?Fugitive Dreams? flees to a Costa Rican jungle only to discover why it is called green hell. A farmer besieged by ?Dust Devils? resorts to a grisly ritual in the hope of making his land productive again. A boy whose dying grandmother teaches him how to find ?Wild Onions? can?t forgive his father for wrong doings real and imagined. A lovesick fisherman challenges the forces of nature on ?The Islet.?

The nostalgia has a comic edge in ?The Nitroglycerin Club,? three teenaged misfits who shake up their dull hometown with harmless explosions; the sardonic ?Mother Maui, Sister Blue?; and the surprises awaiting a playboy when he has a ?Rendezvous With A Former Lover.? The harried owner of the ?Hotel Gringo? is going loco trying to cope with strange guests, suicidal frogs, a gangster who wants to kill him, and the argumentative ghost of his dead wife.

In each compelling story the offbeat characters learn the hard way that time has more than one meaning.