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Jezebel’s Island: A Mystery Thriller by Gabriela Marie Milton – Excerpt 2

…

– In this part of the Island, Anastasia, they have not limited our freedom of movement at all. Only our freedom of thought. And what time is there for free thought anyway? One has so much to do. So many brands of bags and socks to choose from. Here everyone thinks they live their own lives as they please, without realizing that in reality they live only what they are allowed to live.

…

In the living room, Anastasia’s gaze fell on a photo. She paused for a moment, staring blankly. A heavy, golden frame held a photo of a young man, wearing a white T-shirt with vertical green stripes, Polo brand. Anastasia had been to Jezebel’s house several times, but she had never seen that picture before. Behind him, she could see a field where three golf cars had been abandoned. The photo had been placed on a lemon-yellow wooden console, near which one had to pass to get to the other rooms of the house. It was impossible not to have noticed that picture.

She shivered, feeling like a piece of ice was running down her back, and experienced again that cloudy feeling, still incomprehensible, about Jezebel.

From the foreword

….The question remains: Why Anastasia, this young woman saddled with so great a name? Why has she become the obsession of two figures of the ruling class? Perhaps because her passivity and incuriosity have not brought her into solidarity with her fellow citizens, who share her discontent, but rather have made her an ideal vessel for the plans of the elite.

But what plans? Yet another mystery. There must be, the reader thinks, more to Lady Swartley, more even to Jezebel, who is already so much. And what about the servant Armando, who seems to be much more than a servant, or the archaeologist Esteban, whose presence almost seems to bait and tease Anastasia along some path occluded to all others?

Brian Geiger, Former Editor Vita Brevis Press

I am therefore I write

Gabriela Marie Milton

Jezebel’s Island: A Mystery Thriller by Gabriela Marie Milton – Coming in June at Literary Revelation

Meet one of the main characters of the novel: Jezebel

My dear followers and subscribers,

I am absolutely elated to share the exhilarating news that my novel, Jezebel’s Island: A Mystery Thriller, will be published by Literary Revelations this June!

A short Excerpt from Jezebel’s Island: A Mystery Thriller

…….thirty years ago.

We were in the main square of the town when he appeared among us. It was hot; I was sweaty, dusty, and very thirsty. I carried a wicker basket full of tomatoes, potatoes, and cauliflowers. The braided strap had cut into my skin; it was heavy, very heavy. The bright silks hanging from the merchants’ stalls trembled in the dry, burning wind. The afternoon sun seemed to melt over people and things like a boiling river.

I felt its rough touch; my back and hands ached. A moment earlier, he had given a coin to a begging child, who had thanked him, closed his fist around the coin, pressed it to his heart, and then bent down to kiss my dusty feet. I parted from him with a strange sadness. I don’t know why, but that day I wished the sky were purple. Yet the sky was never purple there. I was looking for an ice cream vendor when I noticed his blue eyes, expressionless, the eyes of a winner…

-Yes, he had the eyes of a winner. Winner’s eyes exist, just as there are bricklayer’s hands, three-eyed frogs or prostitutes. He turned to me and said: I feel lost in this City, Miss. Could you help me? He wore a wrinkled, dirty suit of a cut I had never seen before. Later, I was to learn that it was a military uniform. I asked him: Where did it come from? He didn’t answer me. He laughed, and the skin around his eyes gathered into deep wrinkles. I told him: To this place no one comes and from here no one leaves. Then he burst into even louder laughter. I felt myself being watched and looked around, but everything was the same…

From the Foreword

In Milton’s novel Jezebel’s Island, somewhere between the motif of quest and goal, thereare several gnoseological, political, even moral obstacles. That is why this novel is structured as an investigation over which, as we come to know half-truths, other layers of ambiguity are superimposed. This fact results first of all from the gnoseological interdependence, maintained by the author, between the characters in the book. In the constellation of the plot-investigation, Jezebel and Lady Swarthy represent the points of emission of some fundamental information that the reader needs to pay attention to.

At the other end of the circulation on the Island is Anastasia. She is the witness, the recipient, and the actor of events destined to place her between necessity and chance. As the first characters appear on the stage (Anastasia, Jezebel, David), readers are not yet aware of any biographical details of their existence. The narration begins like a cinematic tape that is suddenly set in motion….

Wishing everyone a great rest of the week

Gabriela Marie Milton