A Glimpse at the Eclipse - Literary Fiction/Family Saga - 88,638 words
OVERVIEW: A GLIMPSE AT THE ECLIPSE resonates with hope for the future and celebrates second chances as the novel highlights some of the ways in which people move their lives from darkness to light. The eight interlocking narratives that make up the novel revolve around two main characters: Oliver Siegel, a world famous photographer who loses his eyesight while high up in the Himalayas and Nikki Sakovich, a talented sculptor and seeing eye-dog trainer who grapples with her own blinding guilt over her mother’s untimely death fifteen years earlier, which may have been a murder that she unwittingly set in motion. Oliver must stave off his suicidal impulses long enough to rediscover his will to live and to rekindle his ability to love. Nikki’s journey challenges her to find forgiveness and to tap into her inner resilience. As the two fall in love and collaborate on a series of environmental art installations, their world, and the world around them changes and becomes brighter.
While each chapter stands alone as a work of short fiction, together they weave a bigger tapestry. The characters reappear in different chapters, further intertwining Oliver’s and Nikki’s lives. Each narrative is also part of an ongoing discourse about art, imagination, and inner vision as a catalyst for healing and change. The novel culminates with in the year 2060 as his grown daughter eulogizes him she reflects back on their lives together, which were filled with challenges, darkness, and more importantly, hope, brightness, and love.
COMPS: Jennifer Egan's, A Visit from the Goon Squad and The Candy House intertwining narratives with some daring structural components and a subtext of social commentary. Also, The Many Daughters of Afong Moy, by Jamie Ford, which explores a family tapestry over generations, has an interesting, nonlinear story structure, illuminates love stories, and reveals future perspectives.
ACCOLADES: Top 100, Launch Pad Prose Fifth Annual Competition and Quarterfinalist, ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Competition, 2024 for the first chapter
The Leaping Snow Leopard
Chapter 1: World famous photographer and champion of endangered animals, Oliver Siegel goes irreversibly blind as he’s searching for a glimpse of the elusive Snow Leopard while hiking high up in the Himalayas with his friend and guide, Henry Dorji. The two men traverse back down the mountain through some treacherous terrain and face a blinding snow storm. Out of this darkness, danger, and despair, Oliver discovers his will to live. Catapulted by a vivid memory from a recently deceased, former lover (Carmina), Oliver discovers a cave-like crevice in the mountain where they take refuge and survive the storm. Oliver has a vision of four Snow Leopards, his spirit animal, which Henry sees the next morning and photographs with Oliver’s camera. The powerful image of a leaping Snow Leopard in flight as he eclipses the sun reoccurs throughout the novel, a symbol of salvation, the brilliant timing of life, and the strength of the spirit to transcend the limitations of the physical world.
China Rain
Chapter 2: - Jennifer’s story opens in the year 2060 at her meditation retreat when she’s an eighty-year old woman, sitting in front of the image of Oliver’s leaping Snow Leopard.When Oliver’s pregnant girlfriend of ten years, Jennifer arrives at the airport to pick him up after he returns home blind and disappointed after an unsuccessful surgery in Switzerland, she panics and retreats to her car, leaving him to fend for himself. Oliver knows that she’s there because he picks up the scent of her unique perfume (China Rain). As anger and disappointment fuel his despair, his suicidal impulses challenge once again. Her personal and spiritual evolution has been hard won as she recall pivotal moments when she left Oliver at the airport, travelled to Michigan beg the dog trainer, Nikki to give Oliver her seeing eye-dog, Bo. Jennifer’s story culminates in the year 2035 at Oliver’s long-awaited photography exhibit at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York where she and Oliver reunite for the first time since their breakup in 2020 and her subsequent miscarriage during the pandemic. As Oliver gifts her the artist’s proof of the iconic Leaping Snow Leopard print, we catch a glimpse into their future with his wife, Nikki and their daughter, Maisie.
Imagine Love
Chapter 3:- At the beginning of her romance with Oliver, Nikki reveals the emotional darkness she has been living in since the death (or possibly murder) of her mother fifteen years earlier. When she arrives at Oliver’s home in Chicago just after Christmas in 2019, Jennifer is away on a photo shoot and she and her dog, Bo are alone with Oliver. Throughout their first day together, they each share heartbreaking secrets and connect on a profound level through their mutual attraction, shared compassion, and passion for art. Nikki tells Oliver about being kidnapped as a baby and how she and her immigrant mother, Sasha had to flee New York without Nikki’s biological father, David because of a sociopathic Mafia Princess, Carmina Abruzzo who threatened to have them all killed if they remained together as a family. Nikki learns of Oliver’s connection to Carmina and opens her heart to him, finally in the clear from a threat that controlled her life. After leaving Bo with Oliver, she dreams up the idea for the Imagine Love holographic art installations, which later have a profound effect on the world and on the evolution of our collective consciousness.
Just One Bark
Chapter 4: As Oliver’s seeing-eye dog and Nikki’s closest companion, their dog, Bo plays a pivotal role in all of their lives. Bo’s narrative opens with a life-threatening experience from his young dog’s life when he was assigned a different blind companion. As Nikki and Oliver fall in love, Bo’s perspective adds another layer of humor and heart. In addition to being a service dog, he’s also somewhat of a meddling dog. At a crucial moment when Jennifer calls and could potentially derail Nikki and Oliver’s budding romance, Bo reveals the two lovers’ whereabouts with a well-timed bark. His story recounts some of the profound, yet simple moments as his two favorite, human companions fall in love. When their daughter, Maisie is born, Bo’s life takes on another dimension and greater purpose, which is all about compassion and kindness. Bo’s chapter ends at the end of his life during Oliver’s MoMA exhibit in 2035. He sees Jennifer one more time, and transmits his love, compassion, and apology to her.
SASHA
CARMINA
Chapter 5: Walker Evans Reimagined: Nikki’s mother, Sasha’s story is about survival and resilience. Her narrative traverses the globe from the time she escaped communist Romania at seventeen in the wheel well of a van transporting her parents’ paintings to an art gallery in Paris, to the discovery that her real, biological grandmother was a Jewish woman who gave away her infant daughter to her former art teachers before she died in Auschwitz. Newly arrived in New York, Sasha falls for David, gets pregnant out of wedlock, and has to escape with her infant daughter (Nikki) with only the clothes on her back. Sasha has the soul of an artist, which she encourages in Nikki. Sasha’s tragic and untimely death destroys her chances of being reunited in the physical realm with her great love, David, Nikki’s father, but her creative ingenuity forages a new way to connect with him. Sasha’s narrative is about reimagining both the past and the future and infusing it with love and connectedness. A portion of her narrative is from the vantage point of her soul as it leaves her body after the car crash. Her past reflections and her deep love for David keep her close enough to the incarnated world to connect with him one more time. By doing so, she moves her life from darkness to light.
Chapter 6 - Killing Marco: Carmina Abruzzo, the Mafia Princess begins her narrative at the moment she believes she has just killed her lifelong lover, Marco the most notorious hitman for her father’s syndicated crime empire. Carmina reflects on their lives together and how they became lovers when he was twenty-three and she was just thirteen. Unaware of the abusive nature of their relationship and starved for love and attention by her parents, she clung to her relationship with him, even after she got pregnant at fifteen and had an illegal abortion, which nearly killed her and made her unable to ever have children. As she recalls both the good and bad memories with him, she’s finally reduce her to tears. Marco perceives this as love and ‘comes back to life’ since he was faking his death all along. Marco professes his undying love for her and claims that he would rather die with her than live without her. He poisons the food from room service and stages their alleged double suicide, leaving her to believe in his love for her as she takes her last breath and he watches her die.
DAVID
Chapter 7: When Thoughts Become Wings: David’s story is one of redemption and revival. It opens at an NFL football game when he realizes that Marco is stalking him to kill him. David has spent most of his adult life in a Special Ops unit of the army, so he calls upon his training to outsmart Marco and kill him first. Soon after, David discovers that Sasha has already died, which leaves him despondent. He drives all night to Sasha’s former home in Michigan with the hope of meeting Nikki. However, when he sees her walking Bo from afar, he can’t bring himself to approach her because of the pain he has caused them all. Years later, David sees Nikki on a morning talk show discussing her Imagine Love public art installations, holographic images of ordinary people who share one last message of love. David understands that she’s in as much pain as he’s in regarding Sasha’s death. He travels to Chicago to meet her. As Nikki opens the door, she understands immediately who he is and hugs him, freeing them both in a moment that they have been imagining for a lifetime.
A Glimpse at the Eclipse
Chapter 9 - The novel culminates with Maisie’s eulogy to Oliver who has just died at the age of eighty-eight in the year, 2060. Maisie recalls moments from their lives together and weaves together snippets of the preceding stories. She pays tribute to his inner vision and his journey from darkness to a bright, love-filled life, as she finds comfort from her family with her husband Elijah (Oliver’s best friend, Henry’s son) and her ten-year old twins, who are named Sasha and Henry. Maisie celebrates Oliver’s life, while also she struggles to truly grasp his happiness, as he has lived more than half of his life shrouded in darkness. In the final moments of the novel, Maisie sits in front of an Imagine Love holographic exhibit, which her parents had created decades earlier. She catches a quick glimpse of a photo that comes to life as a hologram. It’s of her at the age of twelve with her parents at the MoMA exhibit in 2035. Oliver stands between her and Nikki, arms around them both as the photo is taken. Maisie experiences a kind of ‘eclipse of time’ as the two moments overlap and she experiences the past and the present simultaneously. In that eclipsed moment, Maisie is reassured her of the beauty and brightness in Oliver’s life as he proclaims, “If I can live my life surrounded by this much love, I will die a happy man.”