The Far Shore

LOCAL AUTHOR

Warning: book includes graphic description of war situations, including torture.

With The Far Shore, Scheuring has woven a tale that traverses time itself. It is the slow stitching together of a person’s life, quilted from memories of the distant past, giving shape, form, and substance to a soul long departed from this mortal coil and, in doing so, regaining ancestral inheritance. Money’s just a bonus. The past has no price.

Lily is stuck in a dead-end job, working for the same company her father did–the same company that killed her father. Asbestos inhalation. One day, Lily gets a visit from a man named Bruce, an heir finder, who claims she is the heir to a multi-million fortune belonging to her grandfather. There’s a catch, though. She needs proof he’s deceased. Gray Allen was reported killed in action during World War II, and no body was ever returned to the US. Thus begins the adventure of a lifetime for Lily, as she sets out to find what really happened to her grandfather. Her travels take her to an abandoned corner of America, to Hawaii, Japan, Myanmar. Nothing prepares Lily for learning the truth of her grandfather.

I quite enjoyed reading Gray’s letters and hearing the stories of his life, as shared by others, though they made me wish I had asked my grandfather more about his time in the Pacific theatre during World War II. This story was solid narration, which threw me off til I figured what was “wrong.” The flow of the story is different than dialogue-based stories. Much is told through letters, emails, stream-of-consciousness thinking, and stories related by others. More than once, I was given pause and needed to stop and ponder things for a little.

Highly recommended, especially if you enjoy historical fiction centered on World War II.