Turning Back The River Speaks - by Peter C Gimpel (Paperback)

About the Book

A young scholar on a career path involving the preservation of ancient texts investigates the long-forgotten disappearance of the pretty coed who once loved him. The search leads him into amazing discoveries and a grave predicament.

Book Synopsis

Three forgotten melodies lead Shelumiel (AKA Louis), a young classics scholar, on a career path involving the preservation of ancient Greek texts before they fall prey to the ravages of time. A fourth melody, never forgotten, impels him on a journey of self-discovery. Inspired by his own awakening, Shelumiel / Louis seeks to reconnect with the beautiful coed who once loved him. Learning of her death and finding his further inquiries stonewalled, Shelumiel embarks on an investigation of her long-neglected disappearance.

Shelumiel's inquiries launch him on a tortuous path of convoluted encounters, psychotic personalities, thought-provoking dialog, and serendipitous discoveries--all mysteriously interrelated. The trail culminates in a webwork of betrayal, corruption, and complicity that only the Holmes brothers or a lucid dream could disentangle..

Much more than an engaging mystery novel, Turning Back the River Speaks is an intellectual tour de force with a revealing glimpse into various philosophical, pedagogical, musicological, and sociological problems. In short, though couched in an unpredictable yet carefully organized itinerary of interrelated themes and motives, Turning Back The River Speaks is a blistering social satire with far-reaching implications for the reconstruction of an American self-awareness.

In spite of its demands on the intellectual curiosity of the reader, Turning Back the River Speaks is filled with the author's characteristically outrageous humor. wit, and hairpin turns.

Review Quotes

"Unpredictability and suspense, in the hands of the right author, lend a story the elements of anticipation and surprise that keep readers turning pages, and in this book Gimpel is the right author.

"As he has done in his previous works, Gimpel conjures fantastical and mystical elements brilliantly, weaving them in and out of realism deftly and cleverly.

"The author's multi-form (he prefers the term "polymorphic") approach to story and theme is an ambitious undertaking, indeed, and it is a tribute to Gimpel's skill and vision that he pulls it off."

--Chris Leppek, Intermountain Jewish News, Nov. 26, 2021