Best-selling author Daniel Paisner makes an indelible impression with a
moving and funny novel. From its dramatic and humorous opening scenes to
its touching conclusion, Mourning Wood hooks readers with its eccentric
characters and offbeat sense of humour. Absurdity, grief, and love give
the richly drawn characters depth and familiarity. When Terence Wood, a
fading Hollywood icon, stages his own death and disappears into a Maine
coastal town, he leaves behind a couple of ex-wives and a son -- all of
whom love and hate him. With a back story borrowed from one of his most
forgettable pictures, Wood throws in with the louts and fishermen of Bar
Harbour, Maine. He takes a job at an amusement park and falls for Two
Stools, the overweight coffee shop matron who takes him in. Wood's life
soon becomes distantly, yet intimately, entwined with an unlikely mess
of a man, Axel Pimletz. Pimletz gets the chance of a lifetime, however,
when a publisher reads his obituary for Terence Wood and hires him to
write the star's memoirs. Desperate to make the most out of the
opportunity, Pimletz takes on the trappings of Wood's life. Maine, where
he hopes to track down some leads for the memoir. There, Wood's old
world collides with his new one, and the resulting confusion brings
ultimate clarity.
