I
am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the THE ANCESTOR by Lee Matthew Goldberg Blog
Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out my post and make sure to enter the
giveaway!
About
The Book:
Title: THE ANCESTOR
Author: Lee Matthew
Goldberg
Pub. Date: August
21, 2020
Publisher: All Due
Respect
Formats: Paperback,
eBook
Pages: 348
Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, Kindle, B&N, iBooks, Kobo, TBD, Bookshop.org
A man wakes up in present-day Alaskan
wilderness with no idea who he is, nothing on him save an empty journal with
the date 1898 and a mirror. He sees another man hunting nearby, astounded that
they look exactly alike. After following this other man home, he witnesses a
wife and child that brings forth a rush of memories of his own wife and child,
except he's certain they do not exist in modern times-but from his life in the
late 1800s. After recalling his name is Wyatt, he worms his way into his
doppelganger Travis Barlow's life. Memories become unearthed the more time he
spends, making him believe that he'd been frozen after coming to Alaska during
the Gold Rush and that Travis is his great-great grandson. Wyatt is certain
gold still exists in the area and finding it with Travis will ingratiate
himself to the family, especially with Travis's wife Callie, once Wyatt falls
in love. This turns into a dangerous obsession affecting the Barlows and
everyone in their small town, since Wyatt can't be tamed until he also
discovers the meaning of why he was able to be preserved on ice for over a
century.
A meditation on love lost and unfulfilled
dreams, The Ancestor is a thrilling page-turner in present day Alaska and a
historical adventure about the perilous Gold Rush expeditions where prospectors
left behind their lives for the promise of hope and a better future. The
question remains whether it was all worth the sacrifice….
Praise for THE ANCESTOR:
“A story that blends the familiar and the
supernatural in a manner that calls Stephen King’s work to mind. That said,
Goldberg’s book possesses a flavor all its own—a distinctive mélange of the
sincere and the strange.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Lee Matthew Goldberg is an animal—there is no
other way to say it. His prose is heavyweight ambitious, as visceral as a
sweaty-toothed dog at your throat. He evokes Robert Louis Stevenson as much as
he does a modern thriller novelist. And I’ll be honest: I expected a crime
novel, but I got a spell-binding epic, an epistolary revelation, a tale as rich
as a paying gold mine. The Ancestor is more than a novel. It’s an ode to the
rich tradition of adventure storytelling…seasoned with ample spice of love and
violence and greed.” —Matt Phillips, author of Countdown and Know Me from
Smoke
“In The Ancestor, Lee Matthew Goldberg
masterfully weaves together a story involving family and violence set against
the backdrop of an unforgiving Alaska of both past and present.” —Andrew
Davie, author of Pavement and Ouroboros
“From the icy opening battle of man vs. wolf,
you feel yourself in the hands of a master storyteller and that feeling never
lets up.” —SJ Rozan, bestselling author of Paper Son
“This thrilling novel is rich in descriptions
of the vast, snowy, and deadly wilderness of Alaska; it ably captures the type
of person who chases gold.” —Foreword Reviews
“Beautifully written, and capturing the
unforgiving grit of Gold Rush Alaska, Lee Matthew Goldberg’s The Ancestor is a
thrilling page-turner with an ache in its heart. I’m a huge fan.” —Roz Nay,
author of Hurry Home and Our Little Secret
“A suspenseful historical thriller.” —Indie
Reader
“One of the year’s best thrillers. Blake
Crouch fans will love Goldberg’s Alaskan opus.” —BestThrillers
A deleted
scene.
Sick of Myself – Matthew Sweet
I’m
barefoot on a roof deck, maybe it’s my own, I dunno. Life has been a series of
hotels recently, but I think this is that place the band rented down on the
Lower East Side. Everyone hates me so they all moved out and I’m left alone in
a huge loft with a fire escape that twists up to a roof with barely any railing
to keep me safe. I have a joint in one hand that’s surprisingly still lit in
the rain and a trusty bottle of Absolut Citron in the other. I’m wearing a baby
doll pale blue dress, the one I rocked during the Grenade Bouquets set when the
A&R manager said he was gonna make us stars. I once heard that when you’re
looking at stars in the sky, you’re already looking at the past and they’re
already dead. I’m seventeen and I can completely relate. I’m over myself and
have been looking into the past so much, I might as well be dead.
I chug from the bottle,
the excess liquid spilling down my cheeks like hot tears. What lands in my
throat burns and my eye twitches…I’m so bombed. My makeup has run all over my
face and made me into a clown. I pity whoever will find my ghastly remains. I
bring the joint to my lips and suck as the cherry flares, the smoke streaming
through my nostrils. I’m a dragon in pursuit. Six stories down below, a sea of
umbrellas await. I think of Kristen.
Her spirit no longer
visits and I understand. She has better things to do than deal with the living.
My sister has been gone now for over a year, and sometimes I forget the sound
of her voice. I wake up in the middle of the night frantic that I’ve lost it,
and then a glimmer reappears—a whisper in her high pitch culling me back to
sleep, aware of how my insomnia can plague. She was so proud of my success as a
singer and for me to live my dream, not realizing that it was killing me as well.
I don’t remember the last time I went to bed sober. I feel distant from
everyone I used to care about. Evan can’t even look at me anymore. I’m Nico the
Beast, a whirlwind intent to destroy.
If you heard me on the
radio, you’d be jealous. I’m that girl you wish you could be. My song like a
spit in the face, a baby Courtney Love with scabbed knees, dark red lipstick,
hair dyed so much it’s fried, a scowl for a smile. And then in the next song,
I’m scrubbed clean, my dress full of flowers rather than ripped, my bruises
bandaged, my makeup a light touch rather than an onslaught, singing about love
and hope and everything that grunge is not. Because grunge is dying. Kurt
Cobain solidified its end and the record companies can smell it. A future of
sugary happy pop awaits. What will they do with me, with any of us? We’re
already that dying star. Might as well help give them a push.
The rain has risen in
tempo, a drumbeat on my skull. The joint has gone out and I toss it into the
crowd. It disappears into the ether, like I will soon. I picture my obituary,
the phrase ‘One Hit Wonder’ highlighted. All I’ll ever be. But I don’t have any
more songs in me. My quill is broken, my heart has followed—I’m sick of myself.
I raise my arms like
Brandon Lee in The Crow. Evan and I saw that at the Angelika, an artsy
movie theater down on Houston St., which I mispronounced like it was the city
Houston. We toured Manhattan that day, the first time either of us had been:
hand in hand through The Met and wandering down paths in Central Park, sneaking
through the Plaza and pretending I was Eloise, hot chocolates at a place called
Serendipity, his blue eyes never letting me out of his sight. I never imagined
I could be so in love. Only a short time ago but might as well be a lifetime,
those blues will never look at me in the same way again. I’m tarnished, I’m
filth. I heard a song called “Only Happy When It Rains,” and it couldn’t be
truer. Miserable people feed off misery and that’s all I have to give.
I wonder what my mom and
dad will say when they have to identify my body. They’ve both found new lives
with new loves that will be a shoulder for them. Maybe they’ll be relieved.
Back home, my friend Winter has her own shit to deal with and brought Jeremy
into her drama, so they’ll mourn but are preoccupied enough to only think of me
in passing. I know that’s what they do now. They are still in high school and
I’ve dropped out, promising my folks I’d get my GED, but I never did. And high
school seems so pointless and far away. I’ve lived in the real world. I’ve
skipped down New York City streets with crack vials crunching under my feet.
Out of spite I’ve let a man inside of me whose name I didn’t even know. I’ve
crowd surfed over a hundred bodies chanting my name. I thought I was in love
and never want the pain of it ending ever again. I’d rather be numb. I’d rather
be gone.
My feet are cold against
the tar of the roof, the toenail polish chipped and starting to fade. I give
another swig until the bottle is empty. I aim to launch it into the sky, not
caring who I’d hit down below. I climb onto the edge, wobbling, teeth
chattering, knees knocking, singing a Matthew Sweet song to the world, to this
dark city where I never belonged, so far from a home.
“But I’m sick of
myself when I look at you, something is beautiful and true. World that’s ugly
and a lie, it’s hard to even want to try.”
My vocal chords are raw
from the vodka and pot, my tears make everything blurry. I go to pitch the
bottle and my foot slips from a slick of water. I lose my heart as it leaps out
of my throat and I think I’ve gone over the edge, plummeting headfirst to my
death. But I fall backwards, smacking my head on the tar. The grey clouds above
go in and out of focus until they disappear entirely. My eyes have shut but I
can see the night sky, and one little star, so dead but so bright, guiding me
not to slip into unconsciousness, praying for my survival. Like a diamond it
glows brighter, and I think that maybe it’s Kristen’s eye, somewhere up in
heaven, winking at me to stay on Earth for a little longer because I haven’t
finished all I intended to do, as the rain washes me pure, its drumbeat now
playing Letters To Cleo’s beautiful, simmering song, “Here and Now,” while I
travel back to what led me to become these twisted remains once called a girl.
About Lee:
Lee Matthew Goldberg is the
author of the novels THE ANCESTOR, THE MENTOR, THE DESIRE CARD and SLOW DOWN.
He has been published in multiple languages and nominated for the Prix du
Polar. His first YA series RUNAWAY TRAIN is forthcoming in 2021 along with a
sci-fi novel ORANGE CITY. After graduating with an MFA from the New School, his
writing has also appeared in The Millions, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, LitReactor,
Monkeybicycle, Fiction Writers Review, Cagibi, Necessary Fiction, the anthology
Dirty Boulevard, The Montreal Review, The Adirondack Review, The New Plains
Review, Underwood Press and others. He is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of
Fringe, dedicated to publishing fiction that’s outside-of-the-box. His pilots
and screenplays have been finalists in Script Pipeline, Book Pipeline, Stage
32, We Screenplay, the New York Screenplay, Screencraft, and the Hollywood
Screenplay contests. He is the co-curator of The Guerrilla Lit Reading Series
and lives in New York City. Follow him at LeeMatthewGoldberg.com
Website | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Goodreads | Amazon
Giveaway
Details:
3 lucky winners will
receive an eBook of THE ANCESTOR, International.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Tour Schedule:
Week One:
Week Two:
