Weekend Reading: Slow Boat to Purgatory Vernon Baker
This weekend I will be finishing the fascinating book Slow Boat to Purgatory written by my friend Vernon Baker. I am really enjoying the book. It is enthralling, original, and a really good read. I highly recommend it, so I contacted Vernon and he gave me a synopsis to put on the site. He will also be featured on Wednesday's in Inside Book Studio. Be sure to check out the book and come back Wednesday to learn about the author.
Slow Boat to Purgatory
Alex Donovan was once a warrior. Now he spends his days in a sedate and somewhat bitter existence combing Boston's used bookshops, drinking too much fine wine, and cursing a knee crippled by a terrorist's bullet.
But when Alex's grandfather dies, he discovers the old man has left him not only a vast fortune, but a mystical, ancient book which tells the story of an immortal Templar knight; a man named Gaspar de Rouse, a man who, according to his grandfather, still walks the earth.
Bewitched by the manuscript, written and illustrated by a 16th century Venetian artist who is befriended by the enigmatic Gaspar, Alex takes a journey through history that begins in the war-ravaged city of Acre in the year 1291. It is there that Gaspar is betrayed and loses his life, only to be resurrected by an Archangel and a Demon Prince. Given a choice, to spend an eternity in Purgatory or to serve both Heaven and Hell as a hunter of wayward souls, Gaspar chooses the life of an immortal marching across time doing battle with demons, angels and crushing loneliness.
The secrets of the book consume Alex and he comes to believe that Gaspar still lives. Alex's mundane world is transformed into a race to find the knight. It is a race that takes him from a quiet cove on the coast of Maine to Zurich's hidden banks and the dark waterways of Venice. Eventually helped by a warrior priest whose own secrets and quest to find the knight are shadowed in mystery, Alex struggles to distinguish between those who seek his destruction and those who would ensure his salvation.