The Waterhouse
(Winston-Salem, NC) May 8, 2012— Jimmy Timberlake is the idealist, Marcus Gayle, the arrogant misogynist, and Copper, Marcus’s younger brother, is lost, looking for a role model. As young teenagers, they form a pact: the first one to make a million dollars will purchase The Waterhouse, a place to live out their adolescent fantasy of endless water fights. But much happens between water fights and adulthood—shattered marriages, violence, and abuse. As Timberlake deals with the death of his mother, and a difficult decision about putting down his mother’s ill horse, Copper tries to define himself as a DJ in Colorado, coming to grips with his older brother’s violence and his own guilt over a rape he witnessed his brother commit but did nothing about. Marcus, who’s in and out of jail, continues his ritual abuse of women with little respect for his wife and child. Finally, in an attempt to find himself, Marcus attends a Promise- Keepers rally, but ends up twisting their message until it fits his own destructive views of manhood. Still, these characters reach for “a measure of redemption.” Follow these young men’s lives as they weave together through failed relationships, death, jail, adopted children, ritualistic basketball games, and life-affirming love on their journey to manhood and The Waterhouse.
Praise for The Waterhouse
“With its interrelated characters , The Waterhouse gives the reader both the pleasure of individual short stories as well as the wider arc of a novel. Tiner is a gifted writer, and he expertly plumbs the depths of his characters’ troubled souls.” — Ron Rash, bestselling author of Serena and Burning Bright
“Names are important in The Waterhouse and so are the frequent nicknames that attach additional significance to their owners, but what is most crucial is the perception of each principle character, and that vital task is handled with distinction through Jubal Tiner’s command of multiple points of view. The characters are often frustrated and even more often afraid, yet they persist and even find a measure of redemption, able, as one of them says, as he lifts his young son toward the moon, to ‘pilot the capsule.’” — Gary Fincke, author of Amp’d and Sorry I Worried You
The Waterhouse is available from Press53.com and wherever fine books are sold. Jubal Tiner is available for readings, workshops, signings and more. Contact him at tineerjj@brevard.edu or (828) 577-8324.
Acknowledgments
Thanks go to Kevin Morgan Watson for seeing the vision and sharing a love of The Rainmakers, and to Christine Norris for her sharp editing skills. Kudos are awarded to Terri Kirby Erickson for an introduction to Kevin and assistance in getting my work on his desk. Cutting teeth with Alex Graves and The Tesbridge Siege let me know I wanted to write. Hats off to teachers who shared their love of language, art, and craft: Dave Mathews, Kay Highbarger, Betty Prohodsky, Sandy Feinstein, Troy Boucher, Dan Daniel, Gar Bethel, Albert Goldbarth, Jane Smiley, Christiana Langenberg, Joe Geha, Steve Pett, Gordon Weaver, Mark Cox, and Brian Evenson. To my comrades in arms in the writing communities at Southwestern College, Wichita State University, Iowa State University, and Oklahoma State University who read early versions of many of these stories – this one’s for you. Debts go to other readers at different stages in the project: Lonnie Busch, Ron Rash, Steve Almond, Gary Fincke, Jo Pumphrey, and Bill Byers. Appreciation is expressed for editors who encouraged and championed my work, including Lois Friesen, Jeanne Leiby, Sherwin Howard, Sarah Asmus, Anne Hicks, Mary Carroll-Hackett, and Barbara Diehl. Great gratitude and warmest thanks go to Jim and Marjorie Tiner, my parents, without whose support none of these stories would have been written, and to Tara McDonald, this collection’s first editor and mother of my children to whom this collection is dedicated, in the hope that they and their generation can make this world a better place.
