About the Book
A dog, a pig;
An enchanted jungle;
A quest to find home-
And the magic of being friends...
When the Greeks first discovered amber, they named it 'elektron', or 'substance of sun' because, when held up to the light, fragments of prehistoric matter were clearly visible in its resin. It was like a dream to them, a discovery of self.
THE WAY FAR is the account of a dog, Kikki, and his friend, the pig, and their search for a home in the strange, intractable environs of Gabon. It is a cabochon that reveals, as Kenneth Grahame or Richard Adams did in the amber of animals, that 'substance of sun' inside of us all. THE WAY FAR is a chronicle of struggle and redemption, of freedom and friendship, and of discovery and loss-a fable that has a human impact on us.
And although this book is a work of fiction, there is truth to its telling: I have lived in the jungles of Gabon, with Kikki and the pig.
Hold it to the light, I urge you, and discover.
Be an elektron!
THE WAY FAR is an all-in-one trilogy in three consecutive full-length books, namely, Book One: KEEPERS; Book Two: THE ENCHANTED JUNGLE; and Book Three: MUD-HUT, respectively.
What Others Have Said About THE WAY FAR
"If through some miracle of temporal displacement Jack London had gotten to collaborate with Aesop on a whimsical yet piquant epic set in the jungles of Gabon, the result might have read like Chaffee's The Way Far..."
-James Morrow, Nebula and World Fantasy awards winner, author of Blameless in Abaddon, Towing Jahovah, The Eternal Footman.
"...Anyone who has been moved by Richard Adam's Watership Down or Yann Martel's Life of Pi is certain to enjoy this deliriously lyrical and puissantly poetic fable."
-William Morrow, award-winning fantasy author of The Willows in Winter.
"...Chaffee's timeless fable, THE WAY FAR, reminds us of the power of Story to nourish, challenge, captivate and reflect. A gem of a tale. One not to be missed."
-April Jones Prince, author of Twenty-One Elephants and Still Standing, Who Was Mark Twain? and What Do Wheels Do All Day?.
"Chaffee's writing is colorfully-wrought and lyrically woven, and the stories and events in THE WAY FAR are an original and engaging mix of myth and mischief in a place as distant as any could be. Add to this concoction a cast of characters like no other assembled since The Wind in the Willows or Watership Down, and one arrives firmly and tragi-comically at The Way Far. An endearing fable for young and old alike; a simply must-read adventure."
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David Schmahmann, author of Empire Settings, Nibble and Kuhn, and The Double Life of Alfred Buber.
"The closest I can come to a comparison of Chaffee's work is Jack London's The Call of the Wild meeting Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book. What makes The Way Far special is its setting. I loved the evocations of Gabon: the landscape, the rain, the vegetation, the mystery. What is more, this story has a very rare quality all its own: namely, it's original. It doesn't follow a mode or emulate an example. It is uniquely its own book, in its own right, on its own terms."
-Prof. dr. J. Th. 'Joep' Leerssen, award-winning author, Spinoza Laureate, Director and Chair of Modern European Literature, University of Amsterdam, Holland.
