Rainbow Reviews

BOOK BLURB:
When Johnny Feelwater inherited the house on Confederate Square in historic old Savannah, he didn’t realize, once he stepped through the door, his life would never be same. He had never met Cassandra Mott, the old lady that left it to him. He didn’t know she had come back as a beautiful seductress, to start her life over at age twenty-six; that she was consumed by bitterness and returned to the house bent on revenge.

Cassandra Mott loved the human part of her long existence. She loved the passion and feel it gave her body, which she frequently indulged. She loved the insight it gave her to the human mind, and her ability to use it to manipulate humankind for anything she wanted. She understood those shadowy recesses inside everyone’s head, those tissues and fibers that lay in wait to send their owners down misguided paths. She knew this part of the human mind, and she intended to use it to even the score with Johnny Feelwater.

She would lead him away from his wife and get inside his head and sow the seeds of debauchery. She would expose the sleeping genes he had tried to forget were inside him. She would put him at odds with his sexual identity and watch him grapple with secret fantasies he had tried to repress since his boyhood. She intended to confuse him, and manipulate him, and turn him inside out, and relish every step of his undoing. Then the day would come, when he finally reached wits end, that she would arrange for the final blow.

But Cassandra Mott didn’t know everything about the human spirit. She didn’t know Johnny would find a way to resist. She didn’t anticipate he would search for a way to challenge her supernatural power; and she failed to predict that the human part of her she couldn’t suppress, the emotions of guilt, compassion and love would bring about the downfall of her plan.

BOOK REVIEW:
Self-employed graphic designer Johnny Feelwater lives in Savannah's historic district in a life that is unexciting but at least comfortable. Nine years of marriage to Marilee who is intensely dedicated to her church means good housekeeping but unenlightening and rare sexual encounters. Occasionally he recalls his fumbling same-sex explorations in college, but when an attorney announces he has inherited a huge antique residence on Confederate Square, he enters an entirely new dimension of existence.

The former owner, Cassandra Mott, who had died at ninety-two, has returned to life almost immediately-at age twenty-six, due to the machinations of her brother Julian's spirit. Driven by revenge, Cassandra will stop at nothing to entrap Johnny. His immediate attraction to Julian inspires his sexual awakening, and his entry into danger in lowlife dives where he is dragged by Cassandra. Johnny finds himself obsessed with both Julian and Cassandra, recognizing his drive to be with Julian simultaneously with Marilee's sudden recognition of her own sexual female worth.

The Strange Haunting of Johnny Feelwater is a very complicated yet sensual novel, and lengthy. Johnny is a difficult character for the reader to understand; even as he is almost constantly wrapped up in his own self-reference and self-analysis, he seems to not really understand himself and the reader feels the same way. Marilee I found a much more sympathetic, understandable, likable and realistic character, both in her earlier strict religious mode and in her newly sexually awakened status.

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