Joe wakes up in a barley field with no clothes, no memories, and no idea how he got there. Before he knows it, he's off on the last great journey of his life. With his soul guide Baker and a charge to have courage from a mysterious, alluring, and somehow familiar Stranger, Joe sets off through a fantastical changing landscape to confront his past.
The quest is not without challenges. Joe's past is not always an easy thing to relive, but if he wants to find peace—and reunite with the Stranger he is so strongly drawn to—he must continue on until the end, no matter how tempted he is to stop along the way.
Review
Woke Up in Strange Place by Eric Arvin is amazing! From the first page, a cacophony of words pinged around in my brain. These words were already trying to describe what I was reading, a testament to what was about to be revealed in Arvin’s words.
...“He was beginnings to appreciate the answers to the riddles of life and how the mystery resolved itself”... Arvin took me on a ride that transported me to a time and place that was beyond my expectations. He took a lifetime of tales of dark and foreboding images of death and afterlife and made it curious and whimsical, even when the events in the story were not nice or pretty. The thought that memory must be re-learned by revisiting time and place is something pleasing, yet at the same time scary. All of the past religious beliefs that had been schooled into me became questionable and a different reality plausible, only through this work of art. It was like release and remedy all rolled into one small pill that assuaged a past of doubt and guilt.
...”It’s the connections we make that make us who we are” As Joe makes his way along his journey, I found myself wondering how my journey through a mystical fairy-tale such as this would play out. I wondered what friends, family, ex-lovers I would meet; what lessons I would learn from the life I’d led. I already have begun to think of my special place.
Reading this book, this story was like a combination of the Wizard of Oz meets Walt Disney’s Fantasia meets What Dreams May Come. Read it! It is a must have for any personal library!
