SIGNS OF PASSING

What convinces us that we have been wrong about the world? When do we know that the usual ways are no longer working; that it is time to set down one life and pick up another? Signs of Passing presents ten stories told from the nearside of epiphany, less a time or place than a state of mind in which one can hear the voice calling from beyond the veil of conscious understanding and singing of how life can be better.

TYLER. A young boy, abandoned by divorce, discovers something inexplicable happening in the two-dimensional world of Winchester County, his favorite TV western;

LYDIA. A waitress at a bar called “The Office”, so alienated from the tedium of her own existence she no longer feels any fear walking home at night in the dark when perhaps she should;

GARRETT. A crime detective novelist so beset by writer’s block that he attends the funerals of strangers in hopes of gleaning some advice from the dead, unaware that he is being followed;

EMILY. A young and secretly talented widow struck by the revelation that her late husband was not the man she thought she had married;

HARLAN. A homeless, rural bus driver forced to confront the possibility that the dreams keeping him alive have been too small for him and that it is better to embrace peril in risking everything for a better life than to live safely in a prison of the familiar;

MARIBEL. An assistant veterinarian for a small-town zoo who, unbeknownst to her undeniably perfect husband, has taken to following random strangers around the city as a way of escaping both her guilt and her contentment;

PETER. A squared-away child psychiatrist forced to confront the reality that one of his immature patients and an erotic dancer know more than he does about the fraud of his own existence and the excruciating secret to happiness;

JAC. A young photojournalist surrendering herself to the control of a brutish and degenerate winemaker, all to exorcise a past that will not let her go and that holds all love at bay;

QUINN. A shopping mall employee whose enmity for a local television meteorologist is rewarded with an unlikely opportunity for revenge; and

TYLER. An entertainment media mogul, stricken with sudden news of cancer as he battles in court to retain the rights to remake an old television western about a better life in Winchester County.

A collection of separate stories about interconnected characters, Signs of Passing is devoted to the experience of waking up—of recognizing the better life in all its unlikely disguises—and then summoning the courage to leave everything else behind, and to give chase before it’s too late.

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SIGNS OF PASSING is a collection of loosely connected short stories, in which Owen Thomas’ eclectic group of characters interact and influence each other in subtle ways, often without knowing it.

Throughout this collection, Thomas explores the universal human longing for a new or better life. In the opening story, “Winchester County,” a young boy from a broken home dreams of living in the world of his favorite TV show. In the aptly named “Still Life,” a young woman who lost her husband in the war struggles to break free from her grief until something terrible about her deceased spouse’s past is accidentally revealed. In “Shoreline Drive,” a psychiatrist named Peter who seems to have everything grapples with his desire for more, as well as his need to hold tight to what he already has. The main characters in SIGNS OF PASSING come from vastly different positions in life—whether it’s wealth or poverty, isolation or surrounded by family, etc.—but they all yearn to escape the confines of their current existence. Of course, the thematic similarities occasionally make it easy to see certain plot developments coming, but this collection still contains more than its share of surprises.

Thomas’ fully-realized characters are what make SIGNS OF PASSING a truly enjoyable work of fiction. As with a troubled friend, their actions often seem questionable, but it is rarely difficult to empathize with them, even when it becomes apparent that they are heading down a dangerous path. Thomas’ poignant descriptions of those characters also helps considerably. For example, in “Shoreline Drive” Thomas offers this description of a friend of Peter’s wife who lost her husband and son in an accident a few years before: “Ellen, suddenly, in his doorway, was an attractive, forty-six year old widow who appeared to have conquered the demons that had occupied her for the past year and a half. Her eyes, once hollow black sockets, ringed and ragged with deprivation, had become soft and hazel and responsive to his every word.” While this is ostensibly just a simply description of Ellen, this sentence effectively pulls double duty, as it actually says much more about Peter’s perception of her and shines some light on his conflicted state.

SIGNS OF PASSING is a thoughtful and evocative collection of short stories full of memorable characters.

~IndieReader

What Readers are Saying

5.0 out of 5 stars Entertains you and makes you seriously ponder

First thing this book reminded me was a collection of short stories by nobel laureate, Rabindranath Tagore, in a very good way. Only a writer of a calibre of Thomas Owens can undertake such a complex endeavor and do a fantastic job.

If you care to ask what lies in these stories to draw a comparison with one of the the all time best in literature, Rabindranath Tagore; it is the full development of characters, their desire for overcoming their respective current situations, and author’s spot on examination of facts of life without unhooking reader from the story. Mercilessly modern in the context, the stories in this book portray situations and characters from a very wide array of subjects.

There are very few books, still, that entertain you and make you seriously ponder—this is one of those books. I highly recommend it to the readers who look for entertainment as well as thought provoking substance in a book.

OKP

5.0 out of 5 stars Connected Stories – Great Idea!

I really enjoyed the writing style and the idea of connected stories. In fact, I’ve decided to read it again as I am sure I missed some of the connections. I almost never read something twice in a row!
This author has a bright future. I can’t wait to read more of his work.

Sonora

5.0 out of 5 stars Signs of Hope

An historically great American writer, Mark Twain, ended his book about Huck Finn with the title character saying, “I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest ….”

In Signs of Passing, a great contemporary American writer, Owen Thomas, has created an ensemble of compelling characters who, each in his or her own way, are constantly lighting out for one territory or another, sometimes inward, sometimes to touch the heart of another, sometimes to live the California dream, but always moving forward, exploring a new frontier where they hope to realize a better life.

And they sure could use a better life. Signs of Passing is a collection of short stories, each of which stands on its own as an integral work but is also loosely connected to the others. The stories take place in, or have long roots leading back to, the small town of Summerfield, located in Summit County in what appears to be the southern part of a Midwestern state. For the most part, life in Summerfield is unrelentingly bleak. These stories are dark!

Like the characters in Owen Thomas’s sweeping novel, The Lion Trees, those in his new book live amidst a sea of troubles. Children, women, men — all are set upon by life circumstances that are unfair, by other people who are mean spirited to the point of evil, by sheer hopelessness. And yet, there is hope.

One protagonist, the waitress Lydia, sees the cycles of routine tragedy with a clear eye. “All of that was coming eventually,” she knows. “There was no escaping it.” What she fails to see is an even more jarring calamity that jolts her from the routine and frees her to chart a new course for life.

In a review of The Lion Trees, I asked: “Is change possible? Personal growth? A new day? A fresh start? Or are we destined from birth, or perhaps from our first early missteps, to an immutable character? Character not just as a collection of mental and moral qualities, but as a character in a play, a dramatis persona that we must act out again and again in multiple scenes of our lives, a perpetual Groundhog Day? And what room is left for morality, judgment, approbation and adulation if we are each merely spinning in the discs of our lives?”

Signs of Passing poses similar questions through its well-crafted cast of characters and the decisions they make. Another of them, Maribel, notes the cycle in which we continually meet our own lowered expectations. “We expect and then we repeat. We repeat and we are not free. We are not free and we are not happy. Which is what history teaches us to expect out of life in the first place, but we follow expectation anyway.”

How can there be hope in this dismal scenario? Even in the depths of the Holocaust, the psychologist and philosopher Viktor Frankl found meaning and ennoblement. “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.”

And that is the key to hope and salvation for Thomas’s characters as well. They show up for the fight, not because “it will turn out different — no one can know that; only that it might turn out different. It takes an act of faith to get out of bed believing that today might be different than yesterday and believing a man can change a thing that might happen into a thing that will happen.” That act of faith is like Frankl’s choice of attitude, and Thomas’s characters, for the most part, rise to the occasion eventually, lighting out for the territory ahead and breaking free from the cycles to which they were initially bound.

In addition to exploring these themes of hope and redemption, the craft of Thomas’s writing is an exercise in close observation. He has an ethnographer’s ability to describe Summerfield and Summit County in terms that make them come alive as a real place, inhabited by real and believable characters. In this, he is reminiscent of Wendell Berry and his intimate portrayals of Port William, a small fictional town in Kentucky. Like Berry, Thomas chronicles the good and the bad, with an even hand but a loving touch.

Many of the characters who populate the book are also close observers. Indeed, a theme of observation, even to the point of stalking, recurs in the various stories. Individuals follow one another on a regular basis, sometimes because they are private eyes working on the clock, other times because they are interested — to the point of compulsiveness — in the foibles of others. In many cases, it is this keen observation of others that leads characters to rise above their own initial conditions.

This has been a good year for Owen Thomas. His powerful novel, The Lion Trees, has garnered critical acclaim and an impressive and growing number of prestigious book awards. And now comes Signs of Passing, a dark exploration of the depths of the human condition to be sure, but with the possibility of breaking free and finding a new territory of the human spirit. It is a provocative and enlightening read.

Bob Osborne

4.0 out of 5 stars From the homeless bus driver who was too honest for his own good, to the bored wife who found imaginative gratification …

From Harlan, the homeless bus driver who was too honest for his own good, to the bored wife who found imaginative gratification in stalking strangers, the characters’ personalities in this book are well-defined and dramatic without seeming far-fetched.

There were several stories in this book and I was only bored by one. I would recommend this book to friends.

Entertaining read!

hotdogs’n’chitlins

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is about separate but connected stories – and it’s the best thing I’ve read in awhile

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I’m giving it 5 stars and 2 thumbs up! This book is about separate but connected stories – and it’s the best thing I’ve read in awhile! I look forward to seeing more from him.

Cheryl Montgomery-Nolan

5.0 out of 5 stars I officially love Owen Thomas’ books

I officially love Owen Thomas’ books. I loved The Lion Trees and now I love Signs of Passing. Some of the characters I liked and some not so much. There are many books I replace on the shelf thinking, “This I will reread.” I rarely do so, but Signs of Passing I will reread as I feel I have not yet connected all the dots in these dark stories.

peony