When I first received Linwood Barclay’s Trust Your Eyes to review, I wasn’t quite sure what to think. I mean, this was clearly the kind of book I used to read. The endorsement by Stephen King was enough to tell me that. But it’s been a long time. And I wasn’t really sure I wanted to be thrown headlong into a thriller, especially of the Stephen King flavor.
Then I started reading and I was thrust into the world of a pretty normal guy dealing with his father’s death, putting things in order and trying to figure out what to do with his adult brother who is obsessed with memorizing every city so that he can serve the CIA when some catastrophic event destroys all the maps in the world.
And this obsession with maps pulls them right into the middle of some pretty serious political intrigue, complete with a contract out on their lives and they don’t even know it.
And I read the whole thing in two days. Which says something, even though the violence was a little too graphic for my tastes. I was more intrigued by the story of this man learning how to deal with his brother who was in some respects a genius even though he can’t run a vaccuum or make himself lunch. He continually struggles between trying to love him as he is and trying to make him normal.
A struggle I, too, have faced to some degree with my own son.
I homeschool my children on a small hobby farm in rural Nebraska and write about life more abundantly, from the joy of a baby's smile to the almost unbearable grief of losing a son while seeking beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, a garment of praise instead of the spirit of despair (Isaiah 61:3)
