Toward Byzantium
by
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Jason and First Love
Jason entered Bolton’s sales store after work, sweating, crusted with dirt from sod laying or planting shrubs and gazed at Julie still fresh and clean in pink flowered top and matching pink shorts. When she smiled her full lips pursed as if to kiss the world for its beauty. She loved the rich colors of the pansies and many varieties of roses. She knew the names of all of them from the stark white Frau Karl Druschki to the pale yellow Peace and the brilliant red of Scarlet O’Hara. After high school she would study biology at St. Benedicts in St. Joseph, Minnesota, one hundred fifty miles away. She had the legs of an athlete and firm tush that would propel her past most young men in a race, but she seldom had opportunity to display such talents.
Customers respected her knowledge and advice about plant care and enjoyed her pleasant manner. Still she wasn’t popular in school, in part because she didn’t care to be. She preferred to follow her interests. If they should intersect with others, fine; if not, no matter. The social scene did not draw her. If Jason hadn’t obtained this summer job via his father’s intercession, he would not have begun a relationship with her. It bothered him that she didn’t need the affirmation of her peers. Or so it seemed. Jason teased her at first with inane remarks like “So today you dressed as a petunia.”
And she said something like “Yup. Tomorrow I’ll be a pansy. You look like you’ve been sleeping all afternoon in a ditch.”
“Are you impressed?”
“Mildly.”
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About the Book
As the story begins, Jason Wessman, seated in a hospital waiting room in Seattle, is about to visit his deathly ill cousin and alter ego, Jonah Cannard, from whom he has been estranged. The story involves the two cousins and a neighbor, Wes Jonnamass, who often serves as a counterpoint to the other two. Jason’s presence at the hospital is due both to Wes and to a fourth man, Noah, Jason’s brother seven years younger, who has encouraged Jason to reunite with the man whom he has loved but disapproved of for several years. From boys to men each in his own way voyages toward an illusive “Byzantium.”
The author offers vignettes of each man, sailing together and alone, upon a similar sea, at times meeting, at times nearly lost. He shows the reader their impish boyhood adventures, their search for love and meaning, their choices that threaten their ships, and the discoveries that sail them into calm seas.
In particular, Jason questions his former judgments. Through Noah’s remarkable intervention and the strange circumstances surrounding Jonah’s painting Sailing to Byzantium, he comes to understand the choices he and his fellow voyagers have made and the forgiveness, compassion and love among them.
Praise for Toward Byzantium
“The choice of words, the rhythm of the words, the images the words stimulate, the structure of the sentences, the flow of the paragraphs, the progression of the chapters, the development of the themes—simply superb. Toward Byzantium is a novel about life’s journeys, conducted in the company of loved ones and strangers, headed for some destination (Byzantium) that for most of our lives is cloaked in heavy fog, clouding our vision.”
—Jim Geiwitz, author of Town of Watered Down Whiskey
About the Author
James W. Swanson, author of Creative Writing: The Whole Kit and Caboodle, published by EMC and Sports and All That Jazz: the Percy Hughes Story, published by Nodin Press, has three children and seven grandchildren. He enjoys tennis, biking, golf, traveling with his wife, Lavonne. He plays classical and jazz clarinet and officiates gymnastics.