David Horsey is an editorial cartoonist, a commentator and a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. Now he also is a novelist: Beach of Stars, his debut work of fiction, reached bookstores along with the new year. (Full disclosure: When serving as Seattle Post-Intelligencer editorial page editor, I worked closely with Horsey.)
Horsey’s book follows Will Kelsey, a Seattle political operative, on a Homeric odyssey. Will’s journey is launched when he meets Bobbi, a shapely young woman, on a secluded Mexican beach. He rescues her from drowning, igniting his inner passion and, when rebuffed, struggles to find her again. Along the way, Will and his companions encounter mystery, romance, drama, and peril.
The book introduces a cast of complex and compelling characters. We meet Doug and Shannon, Will’s sophisticated city friends; Bobbi, the woman he rescued; Cassopeia (“Cassie”), Bobbi’s head-strong daughter; Eduardo, an idealistic innkeeper, and the townsfolk in Playa de Estrellas (“Beach of Stars”), an obscure Mexican town. There also are unsympathetic characters, including malevolent ones like Johnny Sloane, Bobbi’s belligerent husband, and Purdy, a beefy claims collector.
Horsey excels when describing Will’s alternating emotions. After suffering a near lethal mugging in New York’s Central Park, he speaks of feeling “a malign presence skulking in the back of my brain. Now, as I lay back on the bed and tried to grab some sleep, the thing revealed itself: that old hoodoo, Death.” It wasn’t the last of Will’s close encounters, nor his thoughts about his own mortality. Just as in his relationship with the stars and constellations, he tells a morality tale lacking only Odysseus’ sirens, cyclops, and sea monsters. He acquires the nickname Orion, greatest of hunters and both lover and victim of Artemis. Will asks about his dual personae: “Was he a hero or a villain or some of both?”
Beach of Stars does a fine job of delving into Will’s thoughts, although the book fails to reveal much about the inner deliberations of other characters. If there is missed opportunity it is in exploring more deeply what Bobbi, Eduardo, and Cassie could be thinking.
Where Horsey excels is in describing perilous adventures and terrain. He relates Will’s solo boat trip gone awry, casting him into dark and restless waters: “My mouth filled with salt water. I kicked up to the surface, spit the water out and was instantly choked by another rising wave… Even if I could climb back in, I would be boarding a sinking ship. Land was at least a mile away and the sea was a raging chaos.”
In the novel’s afterword, Horsey admits it took many years to complete Beach of Stars. He tells of sending a fledgling attempt to an acquaintance, Will Schwalbe, then an editor at William Morrow. Schwalbe said there might be a novel there if Horsey cut two-thirds of the text and reworked the rest. Horsey shelved his hobby manuscript for 15 years. But, after meeting Charles Johnson, the National Book Award-winning novelist and sometime cartoonist, Dave was inspired to take a second stab at fiction. He shared a manuscript with his circle of friends, some of them former newspaper colleagues, who offered valuable suggestions.
It is not surprising to find the debut novel a worthy product. Horsey’s good friend and much-revered author Timothy Egan called it “a masterful bit of storytelling.” Charles Johnson pronounced it “amazingly good.” Few writers have access to such august critical resources. Leave it to Horsey, who is one of the best caricaturists in contemporary politics. Besides his debut novel, Horsey is the author of 11 cartoon collections, most recent among them is Unhinged USA.
When it comes to the staying power of a powerful story, Horsey’s novel outshines and may outlast his award-winning cartoons. This reader of Beach of Stars comes away with lingering thoughts about the book’s realistic characters and ponders what’s ahead.
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