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U Section of the San Bernardino SUN February 18, 2007 
Window Beyond The World By John Howard Weeks and William S. Thomas iUniverse, Inc, 2006 
The Road to Redemption
Every New Year brings thoughts of renewal, for what are New Year's resolutions if not a conscious effort to change and to correct flaws in our characters. We all know how difficult it is to keep those New Year's resolutions even though they are about changes we intend to make in the future. Imagine then what it would be like to want desperately to change a wrong done in the past. But what if we could go back in life and redo a wrongful action, thus expiating a wrongdoing? "Window Beyond the World," a book by San Bernardino's own John Howard Weeks and CSU, Northridge journalism professor William S. Thomas, is a novel about such a possibility. The protagonist of the novel is fiftyish-year old Lance Segundo. He lives in Lake Arrowhead and works as a copy editor for the San Bernardino Sun. As a result of a dreadful DUI accident - murky in Lance's memory - he no longer drinks at work or on his way to and from work. But once home in his squalid Lake Arrowhead cabin, he drinks himself into oblivion. Lance goes through life as if a sleepwalker, without friends or family or any sort of social life, his nightmares as his only constant companions. He has no idea where his estranged parents and brother might be. Through layers of haze, Lance seems to remember that his brother Art and his wife Gwen had moved to some other place long ago. Gwen, Lance also remembers, had committed suicide and after that his brother had moved again. But where? "How could he have lost track of his own brother like this?" Lance agonizes. It is on the eastbound Rim of the World Drive to work in San Bernardino that Lance first gets a glimpse of Art and Gwen in their early 1970s Pontiac Firebird, appearing exactly as they had looked 25 years ago. He dismisses this as a case of mistaken identity until the next time he is in the same spot of the eastbound Rim of the World Drive and he sees them again. This time they stop at a turnout and so does Lance. The three of them go up a mountain trail to a picnic area, where much to Lance's dismay, they proceed to have a picnic, acting as if a quarter of a century had simply evaporated. After that Lance begins to meet his brother and sometimes sister-in-law at a leafy, dreamlike clearing above the picnic area. The place is exactly like a certain spot the two brothers had discovered in Africa while climbing Kilimanjaro. They had called it Window Beyond the World. "Something terrible had happened there," Lance vaguely remembers. "Years of alcohol abuse had almost drowned out the image, the memory, but now, suddenly, it was struggling back to the surface." Then every time Lance goes to that area, he relives important moments in his life: the Kilimanjaro climb, his illicit affair with his brother's fiancée in Rio, his drunken bouts. Simultaneously with this rediscovery of his past, Lance begins a friendship that soon becomes a romance with Naomi Lake, a new and much older than Lance copy editor at the newspaper. Eventually he trusts her enough to tell her of his otherworldly experiences. Revenants. She tells him. His brother and sister-in-law are revenants. I am embarrassed to admit that in all my years of schooling and reading and doing reference and research, I hadn't read anything about revenants. It turns out that revenants were rather popular in medieval times. Revenants are people who have returned to life after death to get revenge (the Middle Ages concept) or to change something in the past, to seek redemption. Through the Window Beyond the World, Lance goes back in time repeatedly to change the past and expiate his guilt about the wronging to his brother and his sister-in-law. In a surprising turn of events, Naomi recognizes that Lance too is a revenant and has come back to avert a catastrophe in their past. In the end, Lance is redeemed and his lacerated soul is mended. If only we could go back in time to change a wrongdoing, or a misdeed or angry words spoken too soon, we won't have any need for therapists and all of them would soon be out of work. "Window Beyond the World" is a book about hope and promise. It is a metaphor about our power to change things and find redemption. It is also a good story that keeps one riveted to its pages. The detailed descriptions of climbing Kilimanjaro and of mountain climbing in general, of the scenes in Rio and especially those in San Bernardino and the San Bernardino Mountains will resonate with many readers. John Weeks, whose column we read in the Sun and his co-author William Thomas will be guests of Feldheym Central Library on Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 6:00 p.m. They will also discuss their book with students at San Bernardino High School the same day, Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 12:30 pm. The events, at which the authors will autograph copies of their books following their presentations, are part of the series "Conversations with San Bernardino Writers" sponsored by the San Bernardino Public Library. Ophelia Georgiev Roop Library Director San Bernardino Public Library |
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