BOOK DESCRIPTION
"Every once in awhile, you read a book in which every element fits together so perfectly that you just sit back in awe at the skill of the
storyteller. Then Like the Blind Man is one of these books." ----The San
Francisco Book Review----
Received the IndieReader Discovery Award for Best in Literary Fiction and Kirkus Review's STAR for a novel of exceptional merit.
IF YOU WANTED TO DESTROY SOMETHING WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO SAVE IT TOO?
A storm is brewing in the all-but-forgotten back country of Kentucky. And, for young Orbie Ray, the swirling heavens may just have the power to tear open his family's darkest secrets. THEN LIKE THE BLIND MAN: Orbie's Story is the enthralling debut novel by Freddie Owens, which tells the story of a feisty wunderkind in the segregated South of the 1950s, and the
forces he must overcome to restore order in his world.
Nine-year-old Orbie already has his cross to bear. After the death of his father, his mother Ruby has off and married Victor, a slick-talking man with a snake tattoo. Orbie hates his stepfather more than he can stand, a fact that lands him at his grandparents' place in Harlan's Crossroads, Kentucky. Orbie grudgingly adjusts to life with his doting Granny and carping Granpaw, who are a bit too keep on their black neighbors for Orbie's taste, not to mention their Pentecostal congregation of snake handlers. Soon, however, he finds his worldviews changing, particularly when it comes to matters of race religion and the true cause of his father's death.
Equal parts Hamlet and Huckleberry Finn, THEN LIKE THE BLIND MAN is certain to resonate with lovers of literary-historical fiction, particularly in the grand Southern tradition of storytelling.
- Violence & Magical Realism
A feeling of otherworldliness permeates the story, and its symbolism is omnipresent and beautifully handled. Realism becomes magical, as nothing is ever precisely what it seems.
- Sex Addiction & Abandonment
With no end to his stay in sight, Orbie settles into routines all but unthinkable weeks before. He forms a strong bond with Willis, the stunningly talented, physically disabled black boy and protege to the uncanny shaman, Moses Mashbone.
- Boy Meets World
AUTHOR BIO
A poet and fiction writer, my work has been published in Poet Lore, Crystal Clear and Cloudy, and Flying Colors Anthology. I am a past attendee of Pikes Peak Writer's Conferences and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, and a current member of Lighthouse Writer's Workshop in Denver, Colorado. In addition, as a professional counselor and psychotherapist, I for many years counseled perpetrators of domestic violence and sex offenders, and provided therapies for individuals and families. I hold a master's degree in contemplative psychotherapy from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. Born in Kentucky and raised in Detroit, I drew inspiration for my first novel, Then Like The Blind Man: Orbie's Story, from childhood experiences growing up around Harlan's Crossroads, Kentucky. My life-long studies of Tibetan Buddhism and Vedanta not to mention encounters with Native American Shamanism are also of note in this regard.
Two memories served as starting points for a short story I wrote that eventually became the novel, Then Like the Blind Man / Orbie's Story. One was of my Kentucky grandmother as she emerged from a shed with a white chicken held upside down in one of her strong bony hands. I, a boy of nine and a "city slicker" from Detroit, looked on in wonderment and horror as she summarily wrung the poor creature's neck. I watched as it ran about the yard frantically, yes incredibly, as if trying to locate something it had misplaced as if the known world could be set aright, recreated, if only that one thing could be found. And then of course it died. The second memory was of lantern light reflected off stones that lay on either side of a path to a storm cellar me and my grandparents were headed for one stormy night beneath a tornado's approaching din. There was wonderment there too, along with a vast and looming sense of impending doom. For these and many others of my childhood memories I owe my grandparents. Had I not been exposed to their homespun and wizened ways I would not have been able to begin my short story much less this novel. The same goes for my dear, good-hearted parents who have survived many bad times to enjoy the good.
REVIEWS
5.0 out of 5 stars Then Like the Blind Man: Orbie's Story December 9, 2012
Format:Kindle Edition
hey..this is a really good read. Its not so easy now to find a good story and a good writer together. Often the "good" writers try so hard to be good they get in the way of the story. It is like they are not writing for the reader but for some literary prize. In this book the author is just darn good. I don't think its so easy to be a grown man and stay true to a young boy's voice and keep it really interesting at the same time. I love Orbie....i care about him a lot and i felt like i really got to be part of his life...and i found it really hard to let him go. So i read it again. I do not usually bother to write these reviews but this book really got my emotions reved up. Highly recommend giving it a read.
Format:Kindle Edition
Debut author, Freddie Owens, swings for the fences and hits a home run with his excellent coming-of-age story set primarily in Kentucky, Then Like the Blind Man. When Orbie's father dies, his life changes forever. His mother, Ruby, finds herself attracted to the smooth-talking, poetic atheist Victor Denalsky, who had been Orbie's father's foreman at a steel mill in Detroit. After Orbie's father dies, Victor courts Orbie's mother, and eventually marries her. Not wanting to nor desiring to take care of a nine-year-old boy with an attitude, like Orbie, who can't stand his stepfather, anyway, Ruby and Victor decide to drop Orbie off at Ruby's parents' house in Kentucky, with the promise that they'll come back to get him once they've settled in Florida, where Victor supposedly has a job lined up. Orbie's mother and Victor take with them Orbie's younger sister, Missy.
The novel is told in the first person by Orbie, who, though young, is very insightful for his age. As I read, I was often reminded of another famous novel told from the POV of a child, Scout, To Kill a Mockingbird. The themes are different, but Orbie's and Scout's perspectives on African Americans in the 1950¡äs are significant to understanding both books. Orbie has some bad experiences with some of the black people he comes in contact with early on in the novel, so he calls them the "n" word at various points in the story.
Through the course of Then Like the Blind Man, Orbie eventually realizes that his grandparents are great people who love him. They may not have attained a high level of school education, but they are wise about farm life and human nature.
They don't like it that their daughter, Ruby, has developed a prejudice for blacks, nor that she's passed it on to Orbie. That's one of the many nice touches I liked about Freddie Owen's debut novel, that in it, it's not Orbie's grandparents who live in Kentucky that exhibit a prejudiced point of view, but it's learned from experiences Orbie and his family have living in Detroit, in the north. Of course, in reality, unfortunately you can find prejudice in every state to this day; but, the author didn't go the stereotypical route of having his northern characters expressing an enlightened POV, and his southern ones being all racists.
Owens, a published poet, has infused Then Like the Blind Man with a poetic sensibility that makes his story and characters come to life for the reader. Through Owens, and Orbie's story, we feel the emotions of being dumped off somewhere he doesn't want to live, at his grandparents' house; but, we come to see them as positive, nurturing influences on Orbie's life. Though Orbie despises the alcoholic Victor, and how his mother has made wrong decisions (to his POV, anyway), Victor is not portrayed as being completely bad. He does show an interest in Orbie at times, like when Orbie expresses his fascination with a scar Victor has on his neck that he got in WWII.
Orbie comes to think that Victor acts nicely towards him only further to ingratiate himself with Ruby, Orbie]s mother. Ruby is the type of woman who thinks she can change the man she loves, to rehabilitate him, and she always holds out a spark of hope for Victor. This is an aspect about her that kind of frustrated me as a reader, and made me want to tell her "if she was real and in front of me" to stop deluding herself and wake up and realize what a jerk Victor is most of the time. But, thinking of a man who has faults as being some sort of "project," or someone who can be "rehabilitated," is a trait that some women have, so Ruby's having this trait brought even more realism to the story.
Besides there being various themes and messages in Then Like the Blind Man, Orbie's boyhood exuberance, how he relates to his grandparents, his changing point of view about much of what he'd taken for granted; and his adventures are what really makes the novel captivating. Freddie Owens fills the pages of his novel with other very memorable characters, like the humpbacked elderly lady, Bird; Moses Mashbone; Mrs. Profit; and Nealy Harlan. If you're a fan of novels like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird, Freddie Owens's Then Like the Blind Man is s Must Read!
The novel is told in the first person by Orbie, who, though young, is very insightful for his age. As I read, I was often reminded of another famous novel told from the POV of a child, Scout, To Kill a Mockingbird. The themes are different, but Orbie's and Scout's perspectives on African Americans in the 1950¡äs are significant to understanding both books. Orbie has some bad experiences with some of the black people he comes in contact with early on in the novel, so he calls them the "n" word at various points in the story.
Through the course of Then Like the Blind Man, Orbie eventually realizes that his grandparents are great people who love him. They may not have attained a high level of school education, but they are wise about farm life and human nature.
They don't like it that their daughter, Ruby, has developed a prejudice for blacks, nor that she's passed it on to Orbie. That's one of the many nice touches I liked about Freddie Owen's debut novel, that in it, it's not Orbie's grandparents who live in Kentucky that exhibit a prejudiced point of view, but it's learned from experiences Orbie and his family have living in Detroit, in the north. Of course, in reality, unfortunately you can find prejudice in every state to this day; but, the author didn't go the stereotypical route of having his northern characters expressing an enlightened POV, and his southern ones being all racists.
Owens, a published poet, has infused Then Like the Blind Man with a poetic sensibility that makes his story and characters come to life for the reader. Through Owens, and Orbie's story, we feel the emotions of being dumped off somewhere he doesn't want to live, at his grandparents' house; but, we come to see them as positive, nurturing influences on Orbie's life. Though Orbie despises the alcoholic Victor, and how his mother has made wrong decisions (to his POV, anyway), Victor is not portrayed as being completely bad. He does show an interest in Orbie at times, like when Orbie expresses his fascination with a scar Victor has on his neck that he got in WWII.
Orbie comes to think that Victor acts nicely towards him only further to ingratiate himself with Ruby, Orbie]s mother. Ruby is the type of woman who thinks she can change the man she loves, to rehabilitate him, and she always holds out a spark of hope for Victor. This is an aspect about her that kind of frustrated me as a reader, and made me want to tell her "if she was real and in front of me" to stop deluding herself and wake up and realize what a jerk Victor is most of the time. But, thinking of a man who has faults as being some sort of "project," or someone who can be "rehabilitated," is a trait that some women have, so Ruby's having this trait brought even more realism to the story.
Besides there being various themes and messages in Then Like the Blind Man, Orbie's boyhood exuberance, how he relates to his grandparents, his changing point of view about much of what he'd taken for granted; and his adventures are what really makes the novel captivating. Freddie Owens fills the pages of his novel with other very memorable characters, like the humpbacked elderly lady, Bird; Moses Mashbone; Mrs. Profit; and Nealy Harlan. If you're a fan of novels like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird, Freddie Owens's Then Like the Blind Man is s Must Read!
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