"Jack and Richard have come to know each other a little, like a dog owner knows his dog and vice versa—although who is the owner and who is the dog, neither of us could say."
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The Alexandrite by Rick Lenz Chromodroid Press
book review by John E. Roper
All of us have dreamed at one time or another of a "do-over." A poor decision that costs us our dream job, some cruel words spoken in the heat of the moment that ruin a relationship: These are the turning points in our personal timelines where we wish our lives came equipped with a rewind button. But what if we could go back and revisit the past. Would it truly be possible to undo our mistakes? And if we could somehow change our future, what would also change in the lives of the people we are close to? Not only that, would our modified life be better or worse than the one we previously experienced? These are some of the questions the author raises in his entertaining and thought-provoking novel.
The rowboat that is Jack Cade's life is swiftly taking on water. His wife Sophie is jumping ship and moving out because she refuses to sink with him into his self-made whirlpool of negativity. His career as an actor also seems to be floating away from him when he blows an audition and then is even replaced in a role that he has been doing for free. Add to all of this the strange, reoccurring nightmares, and Jack is primed to try almost anything to get safely back to shore. An anonymous gift of a valuable alexandrite ring, an ebony music box, and a strange proposal about traveling back in time from a psychophysicist could together form the lifeline he needs, but will grabbing onto it prove to be his salvation or drowning?
Writers have speculated about time travel as far back as 700 B.C. when King Revaita did it in his journey to meet Brahma in the Hindu epic Mahabharata. H.G. Wells popularized the concept as a theme for novels in 1895 when his The Time Machine hit the bookshelves, and ever since then it has become a popular plot device in countless books and movies. While most of the tales require the person traveling back in time to activate some kind of portal, such as by touching a boulder of an ancient stone circle as happened to Claire Randall in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, or employ an elaborate machine sometimes modified to look like an ordinary object, such as a souped-up DeLorean or, even more improbably, a hot tub, Lenz opts to have Jack journey back to a past life through hypnosis. Although this is not a completely unique approach (Jack Finney uses hypnosis as a traveling tool in Time and Again as does the 1980 movie Somewhere in Time, Lenz's slipping in of reincarnation into the plot is more of a rarity. Actually, Lenz's book shares many of the same elements as Somewhere in Time. For example, both feature a protagonist whose love interest has left him and who is having trouble with his career, a mysterious gift, a music box, and a fascination with an actress from the past. However, there are enough differences to make Lenz's book more of a homage instead of a direct rip-off.
In truth, Lenz's tale is a terrific page-turner that is hard to put down. The author has also worked as a professional actor in Hollywood for decades, and much of the richness of the book comes from his insider glimpses of life in the acting world as well as fictional yet plausible encounters with former Tinseltown luminaries like Marilyn Monroe and Joshua Logan. All in all, this actor-turned-author has produced a well-written story that should appeal to those who find the idea of time travel intriguing.