Thirty-five year old Ricky Williams is a solitary individual trying to escape his past in Mark Ristau’s BEYOND THE THRESHOLD. Employed as an in-house corporate lawyer in the Midwest, he has always felt an outcast. Out for a run to escape his incessant thoughts about losing his father at a young age and experiencing a horrific sexual assault while at summer camp, Ricky encounters a boy with dazzling azure blue eyes, and a familiarity that he soon recognizes as his own younger self. Deciding there must be some cosmic reason for their meeting, Ricky and young “David” connect and embark on an odyssey transporting them between Heartland City and the northeast. From the friendly South Orange, NJ childhood neighborhood where a whorling vortex has Ricky recalling the beauty of carousel horses at a county fair, and the splendor of the Maine outdoors where Ricky was brutally victimized, to the stockpiled weapon arsenal of this grown man seeking revenge, and a trip to the NYC World Trade Center district that forebodes of a sinister disaster, Ristau’s well-crafted writing takes both his characters and readers to the edge.
In this intimate character portrait often unveiled through Ricky’s point-of-view observations, Ristau delivers an individual both physically and emotionally scarred. Components of parent/child relationships, sibling rivalry, business conflicts, and bullying, all prove connected to the protagonist’s fears and self-doubt, complimenting the story’s exploration of universal thought on love and hate, honor, guilt, and forgiveness. While readers may find a deeper connection to Ricky’s state of mind after reading Ristau’s first book, A Hero Dreams, detailing the unconscionable violation the ten-year-old endured at the hands of fellow camp mates, sufficient background elements are woven into this self-contained work.
Within this time travel story design we see a young boy prove wise beyond his years, to lead his future self along a more understanding and heroic life’s path. BEYOND THE THRESHOLD is a confirmation of the adage that while we can’t change someone else’s actions, we can choose our own reactions. Here lessons reveal we are not defined by our pasts, but we can move beyond them to reach our dreams.
Mark Ristau’s BEYOND THE THRESHOLD is a provocative, enlightening read that lends perspective to our choice of becoming victims or survivors in this precarious world.
~Carol Davala for IndieReader