Jack Engelhard’s new novel, The Girls of Cincinnati, is now available in paperback exclusively on Amazon. This love-story/thriller was published by an Amazon subsidiary.
What’s It About?
Eli Brilliant, young and handsome, is back home in Cincinnati after failing to make it in New York as an actor. Now he’s employed as manager of a phone soliciting operation for Harry’s Carpet City. The pits! He’s in retail, for gosh sakes. Only one person can save him from utter despair, the girl, the debutante, he left behind, Stephanie Eaton – or did she leave him? They’re in love, but something always happens to prevent them from making it click – and now, something truly menacing appears in the form of a woman who claims to have psychic powers and is out to get Stephanie. She threatens Stephanie (and thereby Eli) with a fate worse than death. Can Stephanie recover? Can Eli still love a woman after what happened?
A Review From Vince Mahoney
FANTASTIC FICTION
What a performance! This is another Engelhard gem. I admit it, I’m a fan largely through reading two of his other novels, The Bathsheba Deadline and that other classic that Hollywood turned into a blockbuster movie, Indecent Proposal. In this one, The Girls of Cincinnati, he’s given us something I never thought possible, a coming-of-age saga that’s also a thriller.
The plot here is riveting, as is usual in any Engelhard novel, and the characterizations are right-on, also as usual in an Engelhard novel. The dialogue sparkles. What’s it about? It’s about life. Anyone who’s been in love – especially love that appears to be out of reach -- will understand what’s going on between Engelhard’s two heroes, Eli Brilliant and Stephanie Eaton. Anyone who feels the approach of menace will understand what these two must endure when a crazed woman appears on the scene, threatening them both with “a fate worse than death.”
Anyone who works at a dead-end job will be right there with Eli, who ends up working for Harry’s Carpet City in Cincinnati, Ohio. Eli is back home in the Midwest after he failed to make it in New York as an actor. So that’s one dream down the drain. But now that he’s back in Cincinnati, he’s got Stephanie Eaton – or does he? Something always goes wrong between them, and this time, terribly wrong.
Engelhard gives us the heartland of America as it’s rarely been given to us before in literature. He gives us an unvarnished view inside the world of Sales and he gives us a broken-down old salesman that’s the equal of anything produced by Arthur Miller and David Mamet. Engelhard is most precious in his asides, his quick-cut commentaries.
In Eli Brilliant, Engelhard gives us a character, though young and handsome, that we can all identify with – especially when we find Eli always reaching for the unattainable. Yes, he’s a lover, a chick magnet – hence the title – but don’t be fooled. This character, and this novel, goes much deeper.
From start to finish, The Girls of Cincinnati is a triumph. – Vince Mahoney
(See John W. Cassell’s review on Engelhard’s Amazon product page for The Girls of Cincinnati.)
A Note from the author
This – The Girls of Cincinnati – is the first novel I ever wrote and I kept it in reserve all these years because first love comes around only once. I finally decided to let it go when it became obvious that I wasn’t getting any younger. Once your work gets published it’s no longer your secret. Over the years (decades actually) I kept polishing it, nursing it and nourishing it, always mindful that I mustn’t tamper too much, otherwise I’d lose the innocence, the youthfulness and even the heartbreak in which it was first written. We never want to get too sophisticated. I began writing it in New Jersey after departing Cincinnati for good, and leaving behind so many people that I knew, and one or two that I even loved.
About the Author
Jack Engelhard wrote the international bestselling novel Indecent Proposal that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. He has since enlarged his moral dilemma performance with The Bathsheba Deadline, which critic Letha Hadady has termed “a towering literary achievement.” His themes have been called “powerfully seductive” by The New York Times and his writing style has been acclaimed as “vivid, cool and muscular” by The Philadelphia Inquirer. Visit his website www.jackengelhard.com
No comments:
Post a Comment