Wassaw Sound
by William C. Harris, Jr.
Summary
A tale of intrigue in the Low Country, spanning from the 1950’s to the present, “Wassaw Sound” is centered around an actual event in which a hydrogen bomb was jettisoned into Wassaw Sound in February 1958. It has never been found. Set in the city and also the marshes, rivers, and islands to the east, “Wassaw Sound” speaks to the power of friendship, the pain of unrequited love, the fruitlessness of unfettered hatred, and the magnificence of faith and its power to overcome.
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Excerpt
Judah Benjamin knew he had had enough. He had grown tired of his work, his friends, even his pricey three-story in Georgetown. He was fed up with deadlines, reporters, lobbyists, and, most of all, the hard-looking, too-chic, and gluttonously ambitious women who seemed somehow to force their way into his life.
Judah had had a stomach full of the two cell phones clipped to his belt and the wad of cash he needed to carry just to maneuver the streets of Washington by day and its trendy clubs at night. He was burned out, finished., and heading out of the capital for home. He didn’t even start to relax until he had reached Richmond.
When Judah passed the Philip Morris complex next to I-95, it reminded him of the thousands of Marlboros he had inhaled until he had quit twenty-five years earlier. This made him think about how he and his best friend, Billy Aprillia, would share a smoke as they drove along the Tybee Road in his father’s car while passing a quart bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon back and forth between them in the summer of sixty-three. They were on their way to Tybee Island, that huge hormone=magnet that attracted every teenager in Savannah to the sound of waves and the thrill of making out in the dunes. “That was so long ago,” said Judah to himself, “and I loved it so much. I used to believe it would last forever.”
In the seat next to him sat Moshe Dayan, his Doberman, who began to get restless. Judah knew the dog needed to relieve himself, so he turned off at a Stuckey’s somewhere south of Petersburg. Judah had named his dog after the great Israeli general he admired so much, the hero of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
While Moshe sniffed a light pole, then left his mark, Judah admired his car. As a child he had ben attracted to automobiles and could name every make and model. Later, as his fortunes improved, he was able to amuse himself with expensive sports cars. He took it as a sign of ageing, when he lost his interest in sports cars and started driving sedans. His latest indulgence was a 390-horsepower, pewter-colored Jaguar XJR. It was magnificent, and it pleased him--but not the way cars used to. Nothing seemed to please him much anymore. Maybe that was why he had just pulled up stakes and left.
Reviews
William C. Harris Jr. is a “masterful storyteller"--St. John Flynn, Cover to Cover
Author's Biography
William C. Harris, Jr., a native of Savannah, is a graduate of Georgia State University and Temple University’s College of Podiatric Medicine. He lives in Savannah with his wife and three daughters. His previous novels are “Delirium of the Brave” and “No Enemy But Time.”