“Ember” by Douglas Keister. (Contributed) “Ember” by Douglas Keister. (Contributed) Early on in Chicoan Douglas Keister’s new novella (his 47th book), a beautiful, 37-year-old woman asks her coffeeshop companion a question: “So, Jeremiah Quincy Jensen the Third, how did you become interested in cemeteries?” Jerry, as he likes to be called, is a taphophile, “a cemetery lover,” giving lectures on cemetery symbolism and publishing books on it as well.
As the 54-year-old academic shares a bit of his story, it’s clear for both of them something else is going on. “They were seeking common ground not so much to find a shared interest,” Keister writes, “but to find a way to explore the palpable chemical connection they both had felt the second they met. Love at first sight seemed trite and hackneyed, but that’s exactly what it was.
” The woman, with her “vibrant red hair,” is named “Ember” ($10.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle). “The word ‘ember,’” she explains, “means a small spark or flame, a symbol of a fire that burns deep within.
It can also signify the fading remains of a past emotion.” Jerry understands; while Ember Owens is good at “finding and losing boyfriends,” Jerry lost the love of his life some two decades earlier. Amber (so like Ember) had married Jerry after her first marriage — to moneyed charmer Jason Lewis who turned “jealous, possessive and violent” — disintegrated.
Jerry and Amber were celebrating Amber’s 33rd birthday when Jason intervened. Amber did not survive. As the relationship between Jerry and Ember deepens, with the sex extraordinary and fiery, both suspect their own motives.
Jerry wonders whether showing Ember his late wife’s grave at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in New York makes Ember a kind of substitute. Ember wonders if this is just another encounter, destined to fizzle, never enabling her to come to terms with her rape as a teenager and giving up the resulting child in a closed adoption. Their love will be tested as a sinister plot comes to fruition while they are visiting Sleepy Hollow.
Jerry, ever the professor, explains some of the symbols on the gravestones that signify membership in secret societies. And then their lives change forever. It’s a romantic thriller with, ahem, a great plot.
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