Customer Reviews

Dust of Eden

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I read this book because it had so many different summaries that I thought there must be a lot to it. There is. I don't suppose my summary is going to catch it all either but here goes. A soldier of fortune who abandons his family in WWII flies a surplus helicopter for tourists and oil riggers about the time of the revolution in Iraq. He stumbles on a patch of sacred sand guarded by fanatics. When he is killed in a firefight, his partner sends his ashes, indistinguishable from the red sand, to his daughter in the States. Half a century later, the daughter (Ariel Leppa) is an old eccentric painter who still lives in the family's farmhouse, which has tunnels left over from Indian wars and the booze-running days of Prohibition. All this sets the scene for the dramatic night of Ariel's suicide attempt.

She has led an unhappy life as a second-hand Rose, and now her "friends" are dead and her daughter is crippled from a climbing accident. In a symbolic act she mixes the ashes of the father who abandoned her into a final painting of her daughter as she was at age 9. The daughter (Amber) comes to life. Ariel then brings back the whole gallery of people who underestimated her and makes the farmhouse a literal assisted-living facility where she controls life and death and health and everything else. This builds through each of her relationships, including her former husband, her boss and the man she really loved who jilted her. A high school teacher who doesn't want to warehouse his Alzheimer father (Martin) in the usual facilities becomes convinced the informal farmhouse community will work for his reclusive father and manipulates his way in by insinuating that he will draw attention to the facility.

Things go horribly wrong when Amber steals the red paint and hides it in a cupola on the roof where she begins to make her own amateurish renderings. Her child's imagination brings unholy things to life -- a scarecrow, a dog, birds, vermin to punish people she doesn't like. The fields and the old tunnels become infested and the farmhouse comes under siege. Mother and daughter are at war using the devices of their mismatched powers. The mother uses subtle, insidious weapons -- an old pet brought back, a second child companion exactly like Amber but threatened with extinction if she doesn't get the paint returned. The daughter creates overt monsters. Played against this are a half dozen other dramas: illusory and impossible love affairs, revenge, vanity, Martin's haunted past and his mistaking Amber for his own dead daughter. There is pathos and heroism in the final resolutions and an ending that could be an ending or not. Given the power that is unleashed in this story, there is nothing that isn't redeemable so long as the power still exists. Fans may clamor for a sequel of this one.

What doesn't come through in this plot summary is the writing skill. Sullivan's style is certainly among the best.

East of Baghdad and West of Bastra exists a circle of ochre dirt guarded by three men who regard the site as the location of the Garden of Eden. Soldier of fortune Clayton Kenyon gathers a small force to steal the sacred dirt, but he dies in the attempt. A survivor sends the dirt to Kenyon's next of kin pretending it is his ashes. Many years later an elderly embittered Ariel Kenyon Leppa decides to commit suicide. However, before killing herself she uses the euchre sand that she thinks is Kenyon's ashes to paint a portrait of her daughter Amber when the child was nine years old.

When the paint dries, nine year old Amber comes to life and the forty five year old Amber confined to a wheelchair suddenly dies. A year later Denny Bryce seeks a decent nursing home to keep his father safe when he passes the Kenyan New Eden Assisted Living Center. It looks perfect as the residents seem like a family and the owner Ariel Leppa appears to be a caring person. He doesn't know that she painted residents into existence, old enemies who hurt her when they were alive. Now she uses the magic paint to turn them into whatever she wants.

THE DUST OF EDEN is a horror novel that is so scary readers will sleep with the lights on for weeks after finishing this book. No one should have the kind of power Ariel does over the lives of people she brought back from death and she is so warped and evil even her own daughter isn't safe from her. There are no heroes in Thomas Sullivan's creation only a very vicious villain and pathetic victims.

Harriet Klausner

"Dust of Eden" is a novel written on a great number of levels. For your average horror fan, there is the main story, winding its way from the desert outside Baghdad to the small assisted living community of New Eden, to the garden that first bore that name, and on to the conclusion. There are no slow moments in Sullivan's prose. The plot is as winding and sinuous as the serpent that inhabits it, and the characters come to life along the way, each in his or her own time and depth, but the curves are more like whip-cracks, flicking the reader forward in roller-coaster fashion, than they are impediments.
Still, to be drawn into the quick moving plot and stop there would not do this work justice. There are deeper relationships binding certain of the characters. There are moral and philosophical questions littering the pages and demanding at least passing attention.
There is a crater full of red dust in the desert. A small, very secret circle of men guards it to the death, as it has been since time out of mind. One man discovers that red bowl of sand by accident, and acts as men throughout history have acted. First he is curious, then he covets, and at last, when he as taken the object of his desire, he contemplates it, regrets his actions, and seeks redemption.
Though on the surface this is a novel of coincidences, beneath that is the thread of destiny. Do things happen because they happen, or is there a greater intelligence behind it? Is that intelligence malevolent, or benign? Loving, or manipulating? If that intelligence is, in fact, modeled after Man, as most organized religions would portray it, will it act in accordance with that similarity, or is there something greater and meaningful behind it all?
In "Dust of Eden," some of the sand of creation -- whether it is the stuff of which Eden was made, or the dust that it became at its destruction, is not clear - is stolen. Most of what is stolen is reclaimed, presumably by the guardians from whom it was taken, but one vessel is mailed off America disguised as the ashes of a man who died while stealing it.
The ashes end up sitting around forgotten, until the night that Ariel, an artist, remembers them on the night she has chosen to end her life. When she mixes the sand of Creation with her paints, everything changes - for her, anyway, and what follows is, I believe, a pretty accurate portrayal of Man (or Woman) as creator - how the human mind might react to ultimate power, how small the focus of their ambition could be, and how petty their handling of unthinkable control over others.
And Ariel has a daughter. Her daughter died in her forties, wheelchair bound after a rock climbing accident. Amber has returned, with the painting of her portrait, and from the daughter we get reflections of the mother, and the father, and another perspective on Creation.
Tied in with all of this, we have Martin and Denny Bryce. Martin is suffering the dementia of old age, forgetting almost daily what he has been told the day before, and the day before that. His son, Denny, loves him very much, but his own ability to provide a safe environment for his father is eroding with time, much like the older Bryce's mind. When he discovers New Eden, and bullies his father into Ariel's care, a new dynamic is introduced, and along with it a poignant portrait of the relationship between father and son, the dreams and memories that haunt the one, and the desperate efforts of the other to preserve the man who gave him life.
"The Dust of Eden" is not an easily classifiable work. The genres are, in and of themselves, not wide or forgiving enough to pigeonhole it, but the prose is powerful enough to span the borders. Highly recommended.

It just came out and I read it in two days. I usually read a book a week, mostly mystery, science fiction or horror. I'm not exactly sure which category to put Dust of Eden. It's just a good thriller with a lot of fantasy and solid characters. Very real feeling for such a bizarre setting and story. I think any reader would like this.

This is only my second posting on a book. There aren't too many novels that motivate me to comment, but this one is exceptional. Dust of Eden has the perfect microcosm that great stories seem to have. Take a group of intriguing characters that range from self-centered to heroic and isolate them in a compelling setting (a historic farmhouse that becomes an assisted-living facility), throw in some uncontrolled magic, and let the mix have at it. Very effective. The little girl who is the catalyst was a most insightful creation. The old lady who plays God with creation is suitably tormented. The facility is called KNEAL - Kenyon's New Eden Assisted Living. Kneel. Get it? I got it. Bravo for this one. If I think about where I wanted some of the relationships to go, I'm sure I could find some fault, but why spoil a good read!

I just finished this novel tonight. It's not my favorite Sullivan novel (that would be THE PHASES OF HARRY MOON), but it's my favorite with a horror orientation.

Thomas Sullivan shows enormous range, from domestic-scale impressions of the raw feelings in hurtful and loving human relationships, to evocations of the other side of death, with all its cosmic horror and mystery. This story is as unique and fascinating an account of reclamation of the dead as I've yet encountered -- there are more than enough seriously bone-chilling passages, written with more than journeyman-like flair -- Sully is truly one of the masters, and he graces our genre when he writes on these themes. The ways that people hold power over each other, the ways we bargain for love, the ways we wish we can make people feel what we want them to feel - it's all here, and much more. Highly recommended.

The old classic horror comics were filled with stories of art that comes to life. That theme is used in this novel. In the Mid-East there is a small guarded crater. It is filled with a red dust. Legend has it that people from the stars came and created man and that the dust is a residue left behind. Some of this dust is stolen for the sole reason that it is guarded. A sample winds up in a funeral urn and is forgotten for many years.

The urn is in the hands of an old widow looking to commit suicide. For some reason she decides to paint one last painting and mixes some of what she thinks are her husbands ashes into the paint. The picture is a portrait of her paralyzed daughter long before her accident. Too tired to follow through on the suicide, she goes to sleep and is awakened by her now-young daughter.

The old woman puts suicide on a back burner and decides, instead, to paint other portraits of people missing from her life. Years later they are living with her on her old farm which is disguised as an assisted living facility.

Enter our protagonist, a professor trying to deal with a father losing his memories. For some reason he thinks the farm is a good place for his father and forces him in.

The farm is a strange place. The father is the only one who does not belong, not having been painted to life by the old woman.

What follows is really not all that interesting. The young girl steals some paint and accidentally creates some soulless monsters. Another of the resurrected is convinced by a voice from the other side to paint the serpent in a painting of Eden. The old woman becomes somewhat power-hungry when she realizes that the risen will not act the way she would like the to.

In the end very little is resolved. One has to wonder where all of the monsters are now (I suppose a sequel is possible). But ultimately I found myself wondering what the point was. We learned very little about most of the characters and those that we did learn about were not interesting. The father-son story could have worked better if the son had some rationale for sticking his father in the farm (he never checked medical facilities or anything else that a supposedly caring son would want to know). The one thing the son does seem to know is that the farm is not all above board (so why does he put his father there?). The reverse Dorian Gray idea was a little interesting but never developed in a satisfying way.

I do not recommend this book to horror or suspense fans. I found it an actual chore to read (the made-up words didn't help).

I've read two other books by this author, but I think I like this one the best. It's a really creepy setting in an old folks home, but almost everyone in it used to be dead except this old woman painter who runs it. Her daughter is also made younger and she accidentally learns how to do what her mother does. She is only 9 years old and the things she creates are extremely scary. There is also a really sad old man in the home. The relationships between the characters are very involved, and the little girl and the old man become kind of heros in the end. Excellent book!
Avid Reader in Allentown, PA

In DUST OF EDEN, an old woman discovers a jar of dust that has the gift of life, and she uses it to control those around her. This soon causes problems when others gradually begin to realize her secret.

This novel was something of a disappointment, as good as the writing is. Though it does generate a good amount of suspense and shock, I expected something a little more philosophical from this Pulitzer prize-winning author than this glorified Twilight Zone episode. Instead of dealing with the issue of the soul or what the afterlife is like (which this novel clumsily sidesteps), it degenerates into a battle of wills between people over the dust. The middle part, especially, lacks credibility, and the ending leaves some plot threads hanging (what happened to the spiders?). A big disappontment, but decent entertainment, nevertheless.