J R Alcyone

Five Fathoms Beneath J R Alcyone

Five Fathoms Beneath is an emotionally engaging, thought-provoking, and life-affirming novel about suicide, the invisibility of mental illness, fathers and sons, and crafting a meaning from the meaningless. If Ambrose Serafeim's life is not quite perfect, then it's very good-he lives in picturesque Western Australia, he has a lovely fiancée, and he is well on his way to fulfilling his childhood dream of becoming a physician. Brose owes no small part of his station in life to his famous father, Alec, a gentle and idealistic pediatric heart surgeon who lives by a simple moral code-do good and be good. Brose believes in his father and that code the way he believes in absolutes like oxygen or gravity. But when Alec shatters Brose's perfect world by acting in a way Brose can neither forgive nor understand, Brose is left foundering amidst an existential crisis and clinical depression, unsure not only who he is, but who his father was. That is until a catastrophic injury in a running race changes everything. The road from that catastrophic injury leads Brose to the same heart-stopping precipice on which Alec once stood. Facing the possible end of his marriage and having seemingly lost his career, will Brose repeat his father's terrible mistake, or will Brose blaze a new path forward, one where he finally realizes his potential to help others?A twist on Loren Eiseley's famous essay, "The Star Thrower," Five Fathoms Beneath blends a realistic medical backdrop with a dash of magical realism to tell the heartbreaking yet ultimately life-affirming tale of a man's quest to find his life's meaning.