Gran's Secret Book

Follow the words of Michael Williams through an odyssey of mythic fiction steeped in magic realism at every turn on the way to one unforgettably spectacular vanishing point.

Anyone who marvels how Neil Gaiman cultivates myth in the classic American Gods will love how author Michael Williams grafts historical stories spanning centuries and character correspondences over decades into a narrative that blooms as lush from its trellis of otherworldliness as it does in its point-blank, coming-of-an-age story about 13-year-old Gabriel Rackett in 1968 suburban Louisville, Kentucky.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Trajan's Arch is how the author balances the real with the paranormal to keep the reader ramped up about the essence of the experiences depicted. The catalyst for that tension is the novel's namesake, Trajan Bell, a 40-year-old man who befriends young Gabriel after he returns to the neighborhood to care for his ailing mother.

The coming-of-age story itself is full of love, loss, and conflict from start to finish, and the superb magical realism permeates everything from chess and baseball to poetry and backyard plants, all the way to the very last word, "home."

The most interesting structural aspect of Trajan's Arch for me as a writer is the author's use of different forms of written content throughout the book.

First, the traditional narrative develops organically until the author introduces correspondence from the protagonist two decades later. The toggle between narrative and correspondence then absorbs another form-several historical short stories that were presumably written by Trajan Bell and range in subjects from the 17th to 20th centuries.

Book reviews of a novel written by a 30-year-old Gabriel and a psychiatric assessment with transcript also factor into the mix in remarkable ways.

All of these elements presented across time function to intertwine the plot for its fully fused mythic and dramatic effect, which by the book's conclusion is as sublime as it is phantasmagorical.

Trajan's Arch is a book for the ages, and Michael Williams is a master of the literary craft!