A Cold Dish : Mike Sherer
A Cold Dish
Imagine if a nearly omnipotent villain was ruining your life. If every failed endeavor was caused by him. And not only your life, but the lives of your parents had been and the lives of your children would be warped by this evil influence. And then imagine becoming aware of this. How would you fight back?
In my mystery/suspense novel six victims of a generations-old revenge plot struggle to end their curse and save the next generation.
“Revenge is a dish best served cold”. This revenge is Antarctic. And Biblical. Of “Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord” proportions. As described in the Second Commandment, from Exodus 20:5 – “for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.” How would such a revenge play out on a human scale?
Six strangers, each on their own private mission, come to the small town of Eureka Springs, in the Arkansas Ozarks. An injured NFL quarterback desperate to heal a blown-out knee. An unpublished writer on her first assignment. A wounded vet just back from the Middle East haunted by the ghost of a fallen comrade. A budding out of control artist hiding out from the dangerous friends of the imprisoned ex-boyfriend she narc’d on. A financial adviser,who has illegally transferred money from one fund to another to cover personal losses, desperately seeking the big deal that will make everything right. And a minister attempting to avoid the personal disgrace that could defrock her. To learn they are not only connected in myriad ways they are unaware of, but also embroiled in a revenge plot stretching back generations. Perpetrated by Timothy Thomas Franklin, a man badly injured by their grandparents, who has been exacting revenge upon their parents and them ever since.
Why Eureka Springs? The numerous mineral springs there possess legendary healing qualities, venerated by local Native Americans for centuries, and more recently exploited by American settlers and their descendants. The water changes their lives, for better then worse. Four years later they assemble once again, this time at Medano Lake, in Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado, to once more partake of the magical water, for their sake and the sake of their children. Only this time they are aware of what they are getting into and will do it right. They think. Fifteen years later their children, the fourth generation, deal with the repercussions of that fateful immersion in Medano Lake.
Biblical revenge. Generational warfare. Mystical waters. Haunted Christmas cards. A boomer villain of mythic proportions. A spiritual transgender who serves an ancient pantheon of pagan gods. And six damaged people learning to love and hope, against all odds, and fighting to protect their children, the fourth and final generation.
This is “Lost” meets “The Iliad” by way of the Old Testament.
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