Pacific - by Trevor J Houser (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Would you be willing to kidnap your child to save his life and set sail in search of a doctor that may hold the key to his survival when everyone else has given up? When it means you may lose everything regardless of the outcome? PACIFIC by Trevor J. Houser discovers what a desperate father is willing to do to save his son's life...even if it means braving deadly storms at home and on the run.

On a remote Puget Sound island, police chief Bell navigates his job and marriage in the wake of his son's near-death brain surgery. When his wife no longer wants to tempt the fates of experimental medicine he takes matters into his own hands. With the help of his spaced-out fisherman friend, Bell kidnaps his boy and sets sail for Guatemala in search of the mysterious Dr. Haas. On the way, they'll brave the seventh biggest storm, befriend two behemoth fly-fishing Nords, and try to outrun the ex-Navy captain hired by his wife to find them.

A 2022 Indie Book Awards Finalist, 2022 First Horizon Book Award Finalist, 2022 The Eric Hoffer Award Grand Prize Short List, and 2022 Honorable Mention for the Eric Hoffer Award in Fiction, PACIFIC is a powerful narrative that takes readers for an emotional ride.

Review Quotes

Fluids in this powerful novel connect a child's brain, the ocean, and a father's tears. Tom Bell is desperate to find a cure for his five-year-old son's incurable brain disease as fluids fill his enlarged skull after traditional surgeries failed. He kidnaps his boy and sets off on an Oz-like quest for a cure in the Guatemalan jungle. Tom persuades a friend with a boat to take them across the Pacific to where he believes a unconventional doctor can save the child. The harrowing journey is filled with both chilling and darkly comic scenes and characters. Though warned of quackery, Tom is still hopeful, much as Dorothy trusts the Wizard. As his son's life is fading, Bell acknowledges he may be only one "to see his little socks for the last time." The book is poignant, stunningly imaginative, and poetic.

​​-- US Review of Books

A deftly crafted and original novel by an author with a genuine flair for the kind of narrative storytelling style that keeps and holds the reader's total attention from cover to cover, "Pacific" by novelist Trevor J. Houser will prove to be a welcome addition to community library American Contemporary General Fiction collections.

​​-- Midwest Book Review

"Very heartfelt and amazing story, loved it."

​-- Gus Van Sant

"If you are a father, or know one, Trevor Houser's Pacific, is a wild, quixotic ride that will challenge your understanding of what it is to be a parent."

​​--Larry Colton, author of Southern League and Counting Coup

"Poetic. Suspenseful. And at times darkly comic. Get ready for an adventure in heartbreak."

​--Michael Mazza, author of That Crazy Perfect Someday

"With mesmerizing descriptions of the Pacific Northwest, Central America, and the miles in between, Houser captures the heartbreak and hope of a desperate parent, while still maintaining a sense of dark humor and playful language that turns the mundane into something mythic. "If you are a father, or know one, Trevor Houser's Pacific, is a wild, quixotic ride that will challenge your understanding of what it is to be a parent, " says Larry Colton, author of Southern League and Counting Coup. For fans of Denis Johnson, Richard Brautigan and Jenny Offill, Pacific reminds us that there's magic, beauty and hope in the world, if we're just willing to go and look for it...."

​--Book Room Reviews

"This book is about a father's love for his son that makes him willing to go to the ends of the earth to find a cure for him."