Editor’s Introduction

It’s hard to believe we’ve already reached the twentieth issue of Embark! I’ve had a wonderful time discovering so many new novels, and I look forward to showcasing many more. This issue features ten exciting and talented new authors who are writing in countries around the world: the U.S., Canada, Nigeria, Australia. While each opening is quite different from all the others, they share the qualities of assured prose, intriguing characters, and immediately fascinating stories.

W. Edward Blain’s novel HANK OWES THE WATER A DEATH begins with a cryptic announcement: the John Putnam Company, which specializes in hiking equipment, will host another “puzzle contest” with a hugely valuable prize. Then the narrative jumps: a young man named Buster is driving with his dog through a torrential rainstorm in the middle of a national park. Soon he crashes the car, which doesn’t belong to him. Questions abound. Blain skillfully weaves together several plot-lines in these gripping opening pages, while also offering a welcome dose of humor in his prose.

Timothy Deer, in THE FOLLY OF HARVEST, also presents a lighthearted but insightful narrative, one that follows a dancer named Mat who has hit the skids in New York and is willing to try anything to get his career back on track—even auditioning for a mysterious show upstate run by a woman known only as “The Artist.” With a razor-sharp eye, Deer finds the humor in the ultra-competitive world of dance, while also bringing to life both Mat’s strong bond with his friend Helen, who has finagled the audition for him, and the overwhelming instability of trying to make a living as an artist in New York.

LAYLA AND RINA, by Jillian Schedneck, showcases another kind of friendship, one that has veered into betrayal and ended in estrangement. As the novel opens, we see the possibility of a reunion, for better or for worse. Layla is an American academic now living in Australia; Rina is the resourceful tour guide whom Layla befriended years earlier while studying in Indonesia. Displaying her familiarity with all of these settings, Schedneck deftly conveys Layla’s many stresses: her work, her children, her marriage, and this past friendship, which suddenly seems to threaten all she has gained.

Several of the openings in this issue delve into the past. In LINE OF FLIGHT, Evelyn Herwitz takes us to the close-knit Jewish community in Worcester, Massachusetts, during World War I, where a woman named Simone nurses her husband in his final battle with the flu, while also dealing with her headstrong daughter. When the daughter runs off to France to serve as an ambulance driver and then disappears, Simone sets out on a harrowing quest to find her. Herwitz expertly balances the two tasks of a historical novelist: transporting the reader to another era while imbuing the characters with urgent immediacy.

Lucinda Brant, in DEADLY DESIRE, takes us even further into the past. Her novel, the fifth in an ongoing mystery series, takes place in 18th-century London and begins with a memorable death scene: not a bloody murder but the bleak demise of a pregnant maid, who dies on an apothecary’s doorstep during a wintry night. With this striking first scene, followed by an apprentice’s discovery of the body the next morning, Brant plunges the reader into a bustling, rigidly hierarchical society—one that, as her Author’s Statement makes clear, she has researched in depth, focusing especially on the realm of medicine.

In his young-adult novel SAY IT LIKE YOU CAN’T BREATHE, Ewa Gerald Onyebuchi vivifies a very different, modern-day setting: a Catholic school in Nigeria, where the principal is a priest and homosexuality is forbidden. For Kanayo, Onyebuchi’s observant and highly engaging protagonist, this rule presents a terrible obstacle, given his rapidly developing feelings for his friend Audu. The book opens with both boys kneeling in penance in the principal’s office, and Kanayo’s thoughts as he surveys the priest’s décor bring us instantly into his exciting, confusing, and multifaceted world.

THE WET HEN SOCIETY, by Joseph Cummins, similarly explores two young adults’ budding sexuality, while also focusing on the adults surrounding them. Set on a Midwest lakeshore in the 1960s, the novel begins with the prickly friendship between two thirteen-year-olds, Jimmy and Sandy, as they spy on Sandy’s mother and the man with whom she is having an affair. Cummins portrays the children’s mutual interest and wariness with a sure hand, and then shifts the story: as he reveals in his Author’s Statement, his primary focus is the friendship between their mothers, two novelists who follow divergent paths.

Jennifer Yeh, in MIGRATORY CREATURES, tackles adultery from the perspective of the spouse left behind. Gina is struggling to adjust to a new life after her husband’s departure, a life made harder by their continued connection through their children and his engagement to another woman. But there is a twist in this novel, made clear in the opening scene: an unusual entity has come to San Francisco, an amphibious creature who can climb trees, and Gina encounters him on a morning walk. Creating an unsettling and totally absorbing atmosphere, Yeh conveys the deep strangeness in everyday life.

Alan Abrams also vividly emphasizes the strangeness in our day-to-day lives, by describing how nightmares from the past can impinge on the present. THE JOURNEYS OF JACK ISAKSEN opens with a classic scene of American teenagers misbehaving—they careen down a dark road in a parent’s luxury car, speeding toward inevitable disaster. But soon the narrative moves back to the early life of the car’s owner, and we learn that he was a prisoner-of-war in World War II. While the novel ultimately focuses on his son, this powerful flashback establishes the long legacy of trauma.

In AL 14, Wayne Garry Fife’s suspenseful and inventive sci-fi thriller, trauma exists on a civilizational level. Androids have taken over most of society’s roles, forcing humans to live on the streets, often addled by drugs. Al 14, the novel’s protagonist, is an intelligent, ambitious android working for the police. Promoted to inspector in the opening pages, he seems set for success, but he has made an unusual choice: to start a family with a human partner. With these conflicting loyalties, Al 14 must investigate ever-more-dangerous crimes, while also navigating the intricate balance within himself between flesh and tech.

Ten openings, ten extraordinary and immersive worlds. I hope that you gain as much pleasure as I did from exploring each one!

— Ursula DeYoung, Founding Editor 

Table of Contents

THE JOURNEYS OF JACK ISAKSEN – Alan Abrams
HANK OWES THE WATER A DEATH – W. Edward Blain
DEADLY DESIRE – Lucinda Brant
THE WET HEN SOCIETY – Joseph Cummins
THE FOLLY OF HARVEST – Timothy Deer
AL 14 – Wayne Garry Fife
LINE OF FLIGHT – Evelyn Herwitz
SAY IT LIKE YOU CAN’T BREATHE – Ewa Gerald Onyebuchi
LAYLA AND RINA – Jillian Schedneck
MIGRATORY CREATURES – Jennifer Yeh