Winner of the 2006 Clay Reynolds Novella Award
“Turnback Creek is a vividly realized, heartrending but never sentimental novella about one man’s inability to go gently into death’s good night. Lonnie Busch is an exciting new voice in Southern fiction.”—Ron Rash, author of One Foot in Eden, Saints by the River, and The World Made Straight, and winner of The O.Henry Award
During Easter break in 1963, the Trumball family drove from California to Missouri on vacation. They were staying at The Baldwin Hotel in downtown St. Louis near the riverfront when twelve-year old Theodore, while playing in the stairwell of the hotel, glimpsed the future, or changed the past, he would never be sure. The inexplicable time-shift allowed him to save his best friend’s life… but it meant taking another boy’s life in the process. The murder left Theodore grief-stricken and inconsolable.
Unable to explain the bizarre events to anyone, Theodore slipped deeper into despair until his parents felt they had no other recourse than to take the doctor’s prescription; for young Theodore to undergo a series of shock treatments.
It’s 1979 and Theodore has his life on track, especially when he lands an interview for a job designing video games. His dream seems to be coming true until he arrives at DreamCo, the up and coming arcade video game company. Theodore can’t believe what he’s seeing at the entrance to the refurbished nine-story brick building—a set of revolving doors he recognizes at once; they’re from The Baldwin Hotel in St. Louis, which had burned to the ground a decade earlier. Theodore wants only to leave the past behind, but what he gets is the president of DreamCo, Frank Cantwell; a corporate gladiator with an insatiable appetite for the paranormal, and an uncanny connection to Theodore’s troubled past.
…he would never be sure. The inexplicable time-shift allowed him to save his best friend’s life… but it meant taking another boy’s life in the process. The murder left Theodore grief-stricken and inconsolable.
Unable to explain the bizarre events to anyone, Theodore slipped deeper into despair until his parents felt they had no other recourse than to take the doctor’s prescription; for young Theodore to undergo a series of shock treatments.
It’s 1979 and Theodore has his life on track, especially when he lands an interview for a job designing video games. His dream seems to be coming true until he arrives at DreamCo, the up and coming arcade video game company. Theodore can’t believe what he’s seeing at the entrance to the refurbished nine-story brick building—a set of revolving doors he recognizes at once; they’re from The Baldwin Hotel in St. Louis, which had burned to the ground a decade earlier. Theodore wants only to leave the past behind, but what he gets is the president of DreamCo, Frank Cantwell; a corporate gladiator with an insatiable appetite for the paranormal, and an uncanny connection to Theodore’s troubled past.
“Absorbing and compulsively readable, The Cabin on Souder Hill illustrates the power of the mind to overcome the dichotomy of what is rational and what is true.”—William Kowalski, author of Eddie’s Bastard and The Best Polish Restaurant in Buffalo
Winner of the 2006 Clay Reynolds Novella Award
“Turnback Creek is a vividly realized, heartrending but never sentimental novella about one man’s inability to go gently into death’s good night. Lonnie Busch is an exciting new voice in Southern fiction.”—Ron Rash, author of One Foot in Eden, Saints by the River, and The World Made Straight, and winner of The O.Henry Award
Lonnie Busch is an award-winning author whose work has also appeared in Southwest Review, The Minnesota Review, The Baltimore Review and others. His awards include the Clay Reynolds Novella Prize, finalist for the Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction, and the Glimmer Train Very Short Fiction Award. He is also a painter, illustrator, animator who has created artwork for many companies including the “Greetings from America” stamps and “Wonders of America” for the USPS.