A NEW NOVEL BY THE 3RD AGE TRILOGY AUTHOR
A wake is an unlikely place for old lovers to meet. The death of an old friend reunites Spike and Ama. From 1970s drama students in London, to the present in Nova Scotia, they pick up again as if it were only yesterday.
How will they reconcile 40 years of personal baggage and a minefield of conflicting interests without creating endless friction between them? They are determined to tough it out no matter what happens.
Spike, now 72, with an unreliable memory, thought his professional acting days were behind him. He decides to turn an old fishing boat into a live-aboard and explore Nova Scotia's coast as a solo sailor. Until he meets Ama again.
As a 69-year-old single mother of a suicidal daughter, Ama has doggedly built a new career in community theatre when her professional acting one petered out. Her daughter, Ocean, entangled with a criminal boyfriend, puts all this in jeopardy. Until Spike reappears in her life.
Can Spike persuade her to follow him to sea or will Ama be able to convince him to stay and help her?
Spike and Ama struggle to find a way to rejoin their fractured lives. They plunge into a theatrical venture together in a dilapidated maritime theatre. With many old and new theatre friends they restore the once-splendid Edwardian Regency Theatre. But their challenging productions happen at a steep cost to both Ama and Spike's new lives together.
'The show must go on' provides a bittersweet test. Ama and Spike determine to find fresh meaning to Jung's famous statement: 'the afternoon of life should be more than a pitiable appendage to life's morning'.
This is Terry Oliver's fourth novel about seniors, for seniors.