New novel “Beyond the Bend” by JP Hermann is released, the captivating story of a boy overcoming hardships and finding acceptance through his ability to enter the minds of animals in his dreams
“Beyond the Bend” by JP Hermann has been released worldwide. This 285-page novel follows Vinny, a young boy born into poverty and faced with tremendous difficulty in his early life. After a tough early childhood, Vinny finds himself estranged from his mother and fighting to survive. He begins working for a “sweetie van” selling sweets far away from his own little village, and travels down a path that changes the course of his life.
When the sweetie van is stolen from Vinny and he is left abandoned in the city zoo, strange things begin to happen. He befriends a lion, Moussa, and has a revealing dream in which he experiences the lion’s memories of Africa. This strange and powerful ability allows him to learn from the animals throughout the zoo, slipping away into distant lands and seeing things he’d never imagined. The dream world is magnificent, but when Vinny is awake, his plight is all too real.
Struggling to get through his days, Vinny realizes that he can’t simply escape into his dreams if he wants meaningful change in his life. When the people around him begin to recognize his extraordinary abilities, their acceptance finally provides hope for a better future.
With a dynamic range of characters and richly described settings, JP Hermann draws readers into Vinny’s world, painting vivid portraits of both the protagonist’s impoverished surroundings and the provocative dreams he escapes into.
Inspired by his own experiences growing up in Guyana, which saw severe economic hardship after gaining independence from Britain, the author delves into a period even before colonialism, when the Europeans came and plundered the Natives. These historical themes underpin Vinny’s journey through poverty, his desire to escape the conditions of his birth, and the attitudes of the people around him, adding weight and detail to the narrative throughout.
The examination of exploitation continues in Vinny’s dreams, as he learns about animals taken from their homes to be placed in the zoo, the plight of people in places around the world, and the conditions that so many humans and animals are subjected to at the whims of a powerful few.
This evocative tale is ultimately one of growth as readers follow Vinny through a range of emotions, difficult situations, and surprising revelations. His experiences transform him but he refuses to let hardship define him. As Vinny grows, his journey becomes an inspiring message of facing life head on and accepting the wisdom found in the experiences of others.
Beyond the Bend (ISBN: 9781961532472) can be purchased through retailers worldwide, including Barnes and Noble and Amazon. The paperback retails for $16.77 and the e-book retails for $2.99. Review copies and interviews are available upon request.
From the back cover:
Bequeathed by nature with a survival instinct, and animal is most at home in its natural surroundings. Here, it will use its skill and cunning to engage in activities to realise the greatest rewards. But when captured by man and imprisoned in a zoo, is its mind also made a prisoner?
Vinny is a street child who is forced to live in the zoo where he finds greater trust among the animals, than on the streets of the city where his misfortune began. Winning their warmth and acceptance, he soon realizes his esoteric power to enter their world and experience their past.
Moussa, the lion, brings Africa to life and Vinny learns of the struggles of her people against men who came on tall ships to capture, imprison and haul them away from their motherland.
Raja proves to be a headstrong tiger bent on his own unsubmissive ways. Not the sharing kind, his growls are always timed to bring discord at the very moment that Vinny is soothingly drifting away into another world. Kamala, on the other hand, is all elephant ears and takes Vinny on a Shikaar in the Maharaja’s kingdom to bag Old Stripes himself, as the White Sahib puts it.
In his waking moment, Vinny must leave his dreams behind and deal with the real world. He must interact with his own kind and endure the struggles of daily life. Fully aware of his plight, Vinny realizes that his life would remain unchanged as a vagrant. And it was, until his natural talent brought him to the forefront and won him adulation and acceptance.
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