Arcadia is where all is tranquil, balanced and harmonious. Aidan Hamilton is an artist and a teacher. He works in a college of education where he is able happily and effectively to combine both aspects of his vocation. He teaches student teachers, and he paints Arcadia. While he does not push the notion of Arcadia too far, he never ceases to give thanks to the Gods he doesn't believe in, for having been called to such congenial labour. His favourite artist is Nicholas Poussin. Poussin, in Italy in the seventeenth century, painted landscapes which embodied the very essence of Arcadia with its lofty trees, its olive groves, its distant walled city basking in the golden light of the late afternoon sun. At first, you do not see, in a dark shadowed overhang of rock a man being crushed by a serpent. Aidan is also blessed with a family, a wife and two beautiful and adoring daughters. Here lurks the serpent. Cathy, Aidan's wife, cannot love their elder daughter, Bobbie. Slowly and inexorably, she is crushing Bobbie's happiness, and destroying the secure world within which the family has been safe, and Aidan's desperate attempts to mediate are of no avail. And then the talented Louse De Grey arrives at the college.
About the Author: Ken Reah talks about being an artist and writing his first novel in his 80s. As a painter and sculptor, I have learned over many years to use what I see. When I walk the dog in the park, or when I'm walking through the city, I see relationships among colours, spaces and shapes that have the potential to become art. I do this with everything in my life - for example, that drawing of my wife from the early days of our relationship. It's sometimes said that everyone has a novel inside them. There would be more truth in this idea if it were said that everyone has, as an unavoidable by-product of being alive, enough experience to provide material for a novel. I suppose I used this material, but instead of paint, I used words. But even though it comes from my experience, Edge of Arcadia is a novel not an autobiography. This is not to say in parts it may not come close to real life: some events, some scenarios, some characters. For instance there is a scene where Aidan rescues an old lady's dog from a raging river: something very like this happened though in reality the dog was mine. As for the rest, that's for me to know, and you to find out.