A small Southern town. A restless boy. An embittered father. And late one night, a careless mistake.

Aspiring teenage filmmaker Josh Lovejoy, uncharacteristically high one night, hits a jogger. It is not any jogger, but David Masters, a popular local activist in the small town of Milledge, Georgia. The accident puts Masters in the hospital in a coma, and shatters the fragile equilibrium of the Lovejoy family. Josh's father, Hal, a clockmaker who keeps timepieces running with a passion he fails to bring to his marriage, retreats to his clock shop. Helen Lovejoy, a dedicated mother and amateur painter, falls into a depression. A shocked Josh reluctantly takes up his court-ordered community service work with disabled children. Meanwhile, comatose David is visited by the ghost of singer Peggy Lee, while his childless wife, Meg, an elementary school teacher, tries to imagine her life without him. In her grief, Meg becomes obsessed with the Lovejoy family.

As the adults around him try to find their footing, Josh indulges in dreams of his future as a famous filmmaker. In love with an unstable girl and estranged from his parents, Josh follows her to New York City, where, overwhelmed, he makes a fateful decision that puts him beyond the help of those who love him.

Set against the backdrop of the Civil Rights era and the fraying social net of the New South, The Timekeeper's Son weaves the lives of these five characters together exposing hidden learning disabilities, broken dreams, complicated relationships, and communication difficulties. It explores themes of grief and forgiveness, isolation and connection, masks and disguises, all while depicting its characters' lives with tender intimacy. Written with a poet's sensibility to language and imagery, with impeccable pacing, and with elements of both the thriller and magical realism, this is a singular novel not to be missed.

Read a sample chapter.

May be ordered from Deeds Publishing, Amazon.com, City Lights Bookstore, or an Indie Bookstore near you.

 

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'Through these poems of courage and attention, Sara Baker weaves a fine thread connecting thorns from the past to the gifts and challenges of the present, outlining new patterns of light and shadow. This collection charts a steady, mindful course as the poet dares herself to "tap on windows," and "summon ghosts" enriching the present moment with acceptance, embracing both light and dark.'

—Grey Brown, award-winning author of When They Tell Me, What it Takes, and Staying In

"Sara Baker writes elegiac poems in the midst of the lives that are being celebrated and mourned. An amazing, fading-away, absolutely unique dance. Very beautiful."

—Coleman Barks, author of Winter Sky, New and Selected Poems, and Rumi: The Big Red Book: The Great Masterpieces celebrating Mystical Love and Friendship

'The poems in Sara Baker's chapbook, Brancusi's Egg are delicately wrought with intimate details of her personal life and illness. Poems of this nature run the risk of sacrificing craft to emotion and narrative simplicity to over-adornment. Hers do neither. They are at once greedy for life and effortless, carrying us backward toward some infinite origin.../ I myself felt comforted reading them and look forward to sharing them inside and outside the health care setting. Like the sculpture with which they so clearly resonate, these poems leave us with nothing but a stone wing/lifting 'beautiful and generously given.'

—Serena J Fox, MD, author of Night Shift

May be ordered from Finishing Line Press