The Dust in Sunlight is available in paperback at Amazon and Goodreads, as an e-book for Kindle, and at booksellers worldwide. ISBN: 9781453721162.
The back cover:
"From a roadside shack in Guatemala to a dental chair in Mexico. From a mountainside in Peru to a pile of rocks on a French hillside. A man selling peanuts, a lone sailor navigating the Caribbean Sea, a girl selling her body, a lost son on a white swan, a soldier sent off to war and a woman caught in a winter of snow. Daniel Lookfar had found all of these and more. But there were a few things he still needed to find. Like someone to love, a home, and a way to get there."
Description:
The Dust in Sunlight is a hybrid compilation – part memoir, part fiction – of travelers’ tales by new writer Christopher Rees that run the gamut from contemporary social realism and globalism to mystical realism. These deeply reflective stories – mainly told through the eyes of the peripatetic Daniel Lookfar – span several countries and continents; Afghanistan, France, Guatemala, Mexico, the Dominican Republic and the United States. In this intriguing collection, Rees illuminates how politics, wealth, history, migration, and culture influence human interactions to create fate. From the leafy heart of a forest in the south of France, to cornfields in the Dominican Republic, to the dusty expanse of Afghanistan, The Dust in Sunlight reveals worlds at once foreign and familiar, with unforgettable characterizations and frank observations of human behavior.
The stories:
In ‘Shoes,’ Rees explores the
symbiotic relationship between visitors to the small community of Olancho and
its inhabitants. Along with the traveler’s sense of dislocation, language,
wealth, and the status of the outsider all play a part in what arises when the
first world meets the developing world – each hoping the grass is greener on
the other side. As one reviewer hints, Shoes
should be required reading for all those who travel to the third world, and for
all those in the third world who believe travelers from the first are a ticket
to a better life.
In ‘The Peanut Man’ we find a
gentle force of nature, a curious emanation of uncomplicated beauty and
tranquility originating in the figure of a humble Guatemalan peanut seller, spending
his days under the harsh Central American sun.
‘Rock Steady’ is
a singular story, an enigmatic tale set in France that conveys an undercurrent
of mysticism and a shamanic fascination with sacred spaces and mysterious
forces.
‘The Caseta Pepsi’ tells of
‘dreams come true’ against the backdrop of a small snack bar at the foot of the
Rio Dulce bridge. The naïve hopes of its owners and the ironies of their
experience are seen through a convergence of viewpoints, as the spiraling
narrative leads the reader on a journey to the heart of paradise in a Mayan
village.
‘Thank God It’s Raining’ tells the story of an archetypally good, simple,
subsistence farmer and his warm, companionable, hardworking wife; their love
for the land and their faith persist in the face of adversity.
‘The Rinse Bowl at
the Mexican Dentista’ recounts an experience, at once painful and funny,
that takes place at a dentist’s office in a dreamlike, late-20C, vaguely mythic
Mexico.
These and other stories form the fascinating composite
of travelers’ tales that make up The
Dust in Sunlight.
Quotes from inside the book:
A Certain Point of View
“These are not ends, but waypoints in the
journey, moments in the flow of things. Go on, open your hand. Touch the
butterfly. You can feel it. It can never hurt you.”
“…the view from your window is one of
winter, with eiderdown fields lost in fog, cloaked in cold and frosted white.”
“We walked up the quiet road, yellow
butterflies dancing around us in the hot afternoon sun. A solitary hawk, an
osprey, glided overhead. Flowers grew everywhere.”
The Caseta Pepsi
“Pieces of chicken cooked in a frying pan.
Refried beans bubbled in a pot alongside. A light tropical rain had begun to
fall, casting a curtain around the Caseta,
turning it into a stage where a single human marionette, her strings hopelessly
tangled, struggled for balance.”
“She led me to the cooking area where a wood
fire burned beneath a large dented black pot. Inside the pot, red beans bubbled
and steam drifted up, mixing with the smoke from the fire. Together they faded
ghostlike into the palm-leaved roof.”
The Leaf and the Machete
“But how else are you to look
into my soul if I do not open the only window that sheds light upon it; the
only window through which can be seen both darkness and light, summer and
winter.”
“I will try to be bold and sweeping with my
brushstrokes, and sharp and incisive with my pen, to draw a clean image seen
through the mists and prisms, the refracted light of that strange thing we call
truth.”
The Rinse Bowl at the Mexican Dentista
“He could be a speck of white
cloth on a sea of white horses. He could sing to the moon and embrace the sky.
He could fly like a bird to the end of forever.”
Rock Steady
“At times I felt just like
God must occasionally feel, looking down at miniscule people, bustling on
spaghetti-like highways, living strangely separated lives, as though they were
microscopic crumbs, falling and scattered, from a giant, crumbling, cosmic
cake.”
“On the back of his head, woven into the
tangled mass of hair, there was a single, used wooden matchstick. Floor, a man
with the slightly unnerving look of a madman, had one other unusual
characteristic: He smelled very strongly of cheese.”
Thank God It’s Raining
“A single, forlorn, leafless
tree stood alone at the very top of the hill. Beneath it was a figure that
appeared, in the distance, to be folded like a broken matchstick.”
“Maybe they stood quietly by their window,
arms around each other, watching the rain fall on the field, feeling the dry
yellow corn drink and swell, and experiencing a gentle strengthening in the
faith they have in their Lord.”
Shoes
“He liked to walk around the
corner of a busy street and know that it was at least possible to see a
solitary Brahmin cow standing untethered and bored at a stop sign, waiting for
nothing. He liked places where it was common, if not an everyday event, to see
a live, perhaps nervous chicken, peck its way across the floor of a busy
restaurant.”
“She was vibrant and pouty, almost an
actress. She was darker than most, her skin a burnt brown, the color of coffee
beans. And she danced, all the time, everywhere. Her body was alive with
energy. Andre thought she was made for love.”
Queen Anne ’s Lace
“Can you tell me if there’s a
cold wind blowing there, Momma? I ask you because there sure is a cold wind
blowing here. It’s chilling the bone and freezing the heart like glass.”
“People like Poppa and me are lost in the
cracks and corners of truth. We are stories nobody tells. We are forgotten
ghosts, spirits hidden from sunlight.”
The Peanut Man
“In many ways, the evening smoke is the
incense of Guatemala. It’s unmistakable. Clean. A signal from one Indian to
another, that yes, we are okay, we are eating again tonight.”
“Then he’d roll his hands together, as a man
would who’d just found a fire on a cold night, and the dark, crimson skins of
the nuts would fly out from between his hands, like butterflies taking flight.”
Like Dancers
“Antonio is too close to the
center of things, too close to the magic of waves. Antonio knows how the sky
feels, and he knows of the joy and anguish of love.”
“I can see the mast, pointing
off into the night sky like a holy cross, the patched whiteness of sails,
glowing like a shroud and glistening with saltwater.”
An Affair to Remember
“I have
sailed in unison with orca, and my vessel has been courted by loggerhead turtles
and manatees. And I have watched White-tailed Tropicbirds dance the dance of
love upon a Bahamian sky.”
“Are
you in snow? Are there chains on your tires? Is there misted breath from your
lungs? Do you hold a coffee cup with both hands?”
