I met Carrie Lynn Fazzolari at the Wildacres Writer’s Conference in 2010, and we have been friends on Facebook for most of the time after that. Her book, Eyes on the Horizon, is Carrie’s first novel, and we both worked on our respective first novels at the conference in between other activities. So when she published this work, I felt it would be appropriate to read it and write a short review.
The main character in the story is Claudia Leisure, a woman in her late twenties or early thirties, who lives in what is most likely a lovely small seaside town on the North Carolina coast. (I’ve visited the NC coast; I could visualize the broad sandy beaches in my mind as I read the book.) But Claudia has just suffered the severe emotional trauma of losing her mother by suicide, and her best friend and soulmate Maryann in an auto accident, only a couple of months apart. Claudia descends into mental shock, causes an auto accident, and undergoes court-ordered therapy with several mental health experts. The title of the book comes from the name of a painting by her mother shortly before her suicide showing the horizon from the beaches. Focusing on the painting—that is, the “horizon”—helps Claudia maintain her focus on treatment and working through the emotional upheaval of having to re-visit the accident during therapy.
Claudia is the only point-of-view character in the book, a decision by the author that, in my opinion, worked well for this story. The story isn’t diluted by jumping from one character to another. We get well into Claudia’s head right at the beginning, and never leave it. We see her from the moment of her auto accident through her therapy, and through her life as an unmarried woman working at a bookstore and trying to convert an old store to a curio gallery which she names, fittingly and rather revealingly, Grace and Leisure, her homage to Maryann (Grace). I felt myself drawn strongly—and willingly—into the mind of Claudia throughout the book as I read, as the author takes the character through therapy, her personal friendships with others in her life, which includes Maryann’s mother, and several others. The narrative can be intense at times; at other times it’s somewhat more relaxed. But make no mistake, the conflict that drives a novel is there, the conflict and mental anguish that torment Claudia’s mind and exact their unrelenting toll until an incident occurs that brings back memories she had suppressed for a long time.
If you’re into psychological dramas, I highly recommend this book. Well-written and well-edited, the book was published by Gatekeeper Press of Tampa, Florida, and is print-on-demand only so it probably is not stocked by most bookstores. I ordered mine through Barnes and Noble, but likely could be ordered through most bookstores.