Where the Stories Live is a novel I wrote that you can download for free in PDF format by clicking the link or the book cover below. The file size is 772 mb, that should take you less than a minute even at dial-up speed.

Where the Stories Live

Where the Stories Live is a narrative about a family using ancient myths to break free from a life that is slowly suffocating them.

It is told by Chase McKeen who drinks too much and lives too little:

 

"Tell me a story, Dad," Jenny asked more than a year ago.

But I didn’t have any stories then. I wasn’t that kind of dad. I was just Chase McKeen with a beer in my hand, smothering and not knowing it. My friend Joe thought Lady Oh’s death started it all.

But it was stories and my wife’s thirty year-old secret that pushed me to lose my family and lose my job and try to kill a man.

Now I sit here on this hill with Lady Oh watching over me. I didn’t have any stories then, but now I do and I think I’ll live forever.

This is our story.

Chase pretends to suffocate his little girl, Jenny, when she asks for stories. It’s a bedtime game to her. Not to him. He’s choking and imagines preserving the one bright spot in his airless life. His son, Thomas, is surly and distant. His crippled wife, Janet, cares more for her garden than for him. Then a death within arm’s reach jolts him to look at himself. When Janet inherits her family cottage, McKeen begins to gather country stories and myths. He can breathe again.

But his conflict with Janet escalates when she tries to stop his search for stories. Finally he stumbles on a secret story about the horrible way Janet’s father, Mason, tried to preserve her when she was a little girl on the farm. This is Janet’s guilty story; why she wants to stop Chase. He confronts Mason, still alive in the state asylum:

“This is Mason. Don’t expect a lot of conversation. He’s been sitting here for thirty years and you’re his first visitor.” The attendant spun on his heel and left. I looked at Mason like he was ticking.

“Mr. Mason,” I began, “My name is Chase McKeen. I married your daughter

No response.

“Mr. Mason?” I put my hand on his red flannel sleeve. Under the fabric, Mason’s sixty year-old arm was thick and muscled but steel cold. I leaned in close, “I know what you did and Janet’s alive.” I felt those muscles ripple and saw his fingers move rhythmically, like a crow’s wings in flight. His eyes like marbles. Glass, lifeless eyes, dead as the flies on the windowsill.

“Your son is dead, Mason. He hung himself. Your daughter is alive and crippled,” I hissed, “But she’s raised a fine family. I know what you did but I don’t know why. Tell me why.”

Mason’s fingers stopped flying.

McKeen realizes that, without his stories, he might become the same man as Mason. His fate unfolds in Where the Stories Live.

Download it for free and I hope you enjoy it.