Two lives built on lies. Two men seeking escape, fleeing the relentless pursuit of loss and regret.
Jonah Hollycock and Fin Sandor were friends, shielding each other from the pain and neglect of their lives at home. But Jonah's torment was deeper than Fin's, and as a tragedy that still haunts them both took Jonah's father and sister from him, Jonah's life spiraled out of control. Arrested for robbery and assault, he was sent to prison for seven years. Now free and home again, he is working at a local factory, married, and expecting a baby. Jonah is living a seemingly ordinary life, but that is soon to change as Fin returns home to the house he grew up in.
After the death of Jonah's sister, who was also Fin's girlfriend, Fin left home, coming back only once for his mother's funeral. Her house and the factory where Jonah works are now his. Outwardly successful, Fin is deeply troubled and lives an emotionally empty life. An alcoholic, he is aware that the alcohol that once soothed him is beginning to erode his defenses. He is haunted by a past he has tried to forget. Then his life takes a sudden turn when an accident leaves him badly injured and without his memory. But instead of a feeling of emptiness, Fin feels a strange compulsion to return home. The secrets that he carried with him are forgotten, but his reappearance in the small mountain town of Acropolis where he and Jonah grew up will irrevocably change their lives.
Acropolis is a mix of old backwoods houses and random suburban developments, old families and shiftless newcomers, fancy restaurants and neighborhood bars, apartments and rundown trailer parks, family style diners and a string of fast food franchises. It is here that Fin negotiates his new life, uneasily seeking a happiness he suspects will be taken from him. But it is at one of the local bars that he meets and falls in love with a girl named Grace. Wanting this promise of real happiness, Fin has to struggle against a compulsive desire to wreck his chances at a better life; he starts working again in the factory he owns and begins to make friends in town. Occasional glimpses of Jonah, though, remind him of the dark mysteries inside him, and of the memories that are growing stronger.
For very different reasons, Jonah is never sure of what he remembers. His vagueness has helped him in the past, but now it is drawing him away from his wife and baby, pulling him into a ghostly reality where his father and sister still live. As Fin struggles with his alcoholism and keeping his new found love and life, Jonah is slipping away from his only chance at happiness. As their memories surface in different ways, Fin and Jonah must confront a truth about their past that has the power to either free or destroy them.
A deeply emotional literary work about the redemptive power of love and forgiveness, You Hear Me? exposes the torment of good people struggling with the darkness that resides in every human heart.
About the Author: Ainsley Finn was born in Oakland, California, and still lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where chaotic greenery and crazy wildlife busily plot to overtake her small patch of suburbia; but, luckily, Ainsley is happy to share.
You Hear Me? is Ainsley Finn's first novel.
