Fan-Shaped Destiny of William Seabrook: A Romance of Many Worlds

An astonishing first novel that transcends the boundaries of genre as much as of space and time, Paul Pipkin's The Fan-Shaped Destiny of William Seabrook answers the most fervent prayer of all mankind: for another chance. But what if chance is all there is, ever, in one world-or in many?

"To the one who perhaps cared the most."

In the twilight of the twentieth century, a young woman broods over a cryptic birthright, an inheritance addressed to her before she was born. Shaped by an abusive past, only the most intense sensations can unchain her heart. Meanwhile, a nameless, corroded sixties malcontent orbits the far point of his life. As his reason unravels, he pines for the redemption of an exhausted history. And in a darkening yesterday, William Seabrook, an all-but-forgotten writer of the Lost Generation-expatriate, explorer, suicide-wrestles with more remorse than one life can contain.

Behind, and up ahead, and in-between these strange travelers, an old woman is dying in a decaying Victorian home. At the terminus of a full life, her memories warp and twist like the adjacent rooms, their doors remaining just a little bit ajar. In an odyssey that morphs extension and duration, blown upon storms of synchronicity, two improbable lovers bond in a sexual obsession with the dead, chasing the ghosts of fantasies become all-too-real. At the end of their quest-or is it the beginning?-waits the fatidic document called The Fan-Shaped Destiny.

The past has caught up with the present.