Are you the ideal reader for A Life on Water?

While creating A Life on Water, I considered who my ideal reader would be: people looking for thrills, spills, and spicy intrigue? Or people savouring the voices, phrasing and nuances of a satisfying story? I leaned into the latter and tried to build on characters’ feelings, not race through them. Now, I am looking for the ideal reader who, I hope, appreciates key moments in my fiction as artful, worthwhile, and memorable.

I wanted to immerse the reader in iconoclastic moments of a bygone era. A Life on Water spans the 1930s and ’40s, known as the Dirty Thirties and Turbulent Forties, and its characters venture into Lisbon, Rome, Vancouver, and Toronto. At that time, the Great War and the Spanish Flu, a pandemic during which an estimated 50 million people lost their lives, were in the rearview mirror. My story opens during the Depression, when big bands and Hollywood movies were all the rage, and the world was entering a second world war.

A Life on Water is not really a war story. Readers experience ordinary moments when life was not so grim and characters discovered their own understanding of the meaning of existence that is as relevant to us now as it was to them during those tumultuous times.

The protagonist is Ardis Lowney, a marine biologist who becomes an Allied spy in Portugal. At the outset, Ardis is a darling who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Her gentle demeanour hardly qualifies her to be a spy. Over time, she must deal with her fear of the enemy and her aversion to violent action.

A Life on Water creates—in authentic detail—the world in which Ardis must operate. “I loved the intricate storyline,” a friend told me. “I loved seeing an unknown slice of history played out in a book like this. It would make a great film.”

A Life on Water is an introduction to Ardis and her experiences as a spy. As you will learn, her story demands a sequel, which I am working on now.

Dancing With Spirits is set in Brazil where Ardis deals with the emotional and psychological consequences of the events in the first book. The cultural milieu of Brazil provides a context rich with mystery and spirituality that are conducive to Ardis experiencing insights and discoveries on her own journey of healing.

You can read A Life on Water now and be ready to dive into Dancing With Spirits when it is ready. It's a journey in the making. Please join me.

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Timothy Paleczny’s books include The Tale of Indigo (poetry, 2022), A Life on Water (historical fiction, 2023), and A Bill to Pay (a two-act play, 2024). Cavalarico.com