Sara Baker

The Timekeeper's Son Sara Baker

T he Timekeeper's Son, a moving father-son tale, explores middle-aged grief and youthful yearnings, the price of hidden disabilities and wounds, and the claims and limits of community.

In the small town of Milledge, Georgia, aspiring teenage filmmaker Josh Lovejoy hits a jogger while driving late at night. But this is not just any jogger: the victim is prominent local activist and historian David Masters. The accident not only puts Masters in the hospital in a coma, it shatters the fragile Lovejoy household. Adrift from friends and family, a shocked Josh reluctantly takes up his court-ordered community service work at the Good Shepherd School for Disabled Children. Meanwhile, the comatose Masters is visited by the ghost of the singer Peggy Lee, and his childless wife Meg, consumed with grief, fantasizes that Josh is the son she might have had.

In love with an unstable girl, and estranged from his angry father and preoccupied mother, Josh escapes to New York City. Things there do not go as planned and, overwhelmed, Josh makes a fateful decision that puts him beyond the help of his family. Facing physical and spiritual annihilation, he must choose between the death of the heart and the acceptance of the imperfect good that is his life. Josh's story reminds readers that while our lives may be flawed, they can still be embraced with love.