Blurb
Lacy Dawn's father relives the Gulf War, her mother's teeth are rotting out, and her best friend is murdered by the meanest daddy on Earth. Life in the hollow is hard. She has one advantage -- an android was inserted into her life and is working with her to cure her parents. But, he wants something in exchange. It's up to her to save the Universe. Lacy Dawn doesn't mind saving the universe, but her family and friends come first.
Rarity from the Hollow is adult literary science fiction filled with tragedy, comedy and satire. A Children’s Story. For Adults.
“The most enjoyable science fiction novel I have read in
years.”
—Temple Emmet
Williams, Author, former editor for Reader’s
Digest
“Quirky, profane, disturbing… In the space between a few
lines we go from hardscrabble realism to pure sci-fi/fantasy. It’s quite a
trip.”
—
Evelyn Somers, The Missouri
. "…a hillbilly version of Hitchhiker’s
Guide to the Galaxy…what I would have thought impossible; taken serious
subjects like poverty, ignorance, abuse…tongue-in-cheek humor without
trivializing them…profound…a funny book that most sci-fi fans will thoroughly
enjoy." -- Awesome Indies (Gold Medal)
“…sneaks
up you and, before you know it, you are either laughing like crazy or crying in
despair, but the one thing you won’t be is unmoved…a brilliant writer.” --Readers’
Favorite (Gold Medal)
“Rarity from the Hollow is an original and interesting story
of a backwoods girl who saves the Universe in her fashion. Not for the
prudish.” —Piers Anthony, New York Times
bestselling author
“…Good satire is
hard to find and science fiction satire is even harder to find.” -- The
Baryon Review
Robert Eggleton has served as a children's advocate in an
impoverished state for over forty years. He is best known for his investigative
reports about children’s programs, most of which were published by the West
Virginia Supreme Court where he worked from 1982 through 1997, and which also
included publication of models of serving disadvantaged and homeless children
in the community instead of in large institutions, research into foster care
drift involving children bouncing from one home to the next -- never finding a
permanent loving family, and statistical reports on the occurrence and
correlates of child abuse and delinquency.
Today, he is a retired children's psychotherapist from the
mental health center in Charleston ,
West Virginia
Purchase
links:
Let’s Make Political Allegory Fun Again!
I’m not sure if Facebook was a friendlier place before
Donald Trump announced that he was going to run for U.S. President, but if you
visit today it is filled with politics. Some posts are FAKE NEWS while others
true. Regardless, divisiveness is a prominent theme of our environments on
social media, television, radio, at work, and in our own dining rooms. I have
read comments by some people who are sick of politics, worn out, and by others
who believe that one of the most famous works of fiction, 1984 by George Orwell, describes today’s reality and believe that
it is their mission to warn us all.
Several other dystopian novels have been published in the
English language and have described corrupt systems that destroy societies. In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, reading
has been outlawed, thereby diminishing free and critical thinking. Recently,
Donald Trump lashed out at media coverage by alleging that he had been treated
unfairly. http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/16/politics/donald-trump-press-conference-amazing-day-in-history/
Whether this is true or not, the average citizen has no convenient way to
judge, but skepticism about whether critical thinking is biased appears to be
prominent.
In Brave New Worlds by
Aldous Huxley, government forces its citizens into a cycle of endless
consumption, perhaps considered by some who question whether Donald Trump has
severed his business ties. President Trump’s tweet about Ivanka’s clothing line
received reaction. http://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/02/08/as-more-retailers-drop-ivankas-clothing-line-president-trump-slaps-back-on-twitter/
It’s my understanding, but nobody can be absolutely certain in this day and
age, that Trump’s business ties to Russia
are part of an investigation about the extent of the attempt to influence the U.S. elections.
Fictional or factual, none of this political stuff is fun to consider.
There are several other novels full of political allegory
that are quite disturbing to some readers: Animal
Farm by George Orwell, Lord of the
Flies by William Golding, Children of
Men by P.D. James…. I don’t know about you, no matter how prophetic such
masterpieces have been found to be, or not, there’s enough going on in life and
politics today that’s of serious concern to me. I’ll not be rereading these dystopias
anytime soon. I can get all of this type of reading, all that I can handle, on
Facebook.
With some exception, I am less familiar with novels that
have employed comedy and satire to prompt reflection on political allegory.
This is probably a weakness in my reading history, or maybe I’ve become too
serious about politics that few such works are coming to mind. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller is one that I
could get in the mood to reread given our political environment. So is Mash by Richard Hooker, and Wag the Dog by Larry Beinhart – the
government stages a fictional war to cover-up offensive sexual behaviors by a
president. Oh, I don’t know about the last one that I mentioned given the
settled and dropped lawsuits filed against Donald Trump that have alleged
sexual indiscretions. http://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2016-11-10/lawsuits-against-donald-trump-unprecedented-for-president-elect
I’m not aware of any pending similar filings. But, Trump’s infamous comment
about grabbing a woman by her p_______ may cause rereading Wag the Fox to feel too serious to me at this time. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/us/donald-trump-tape-transcript.html
Without taking a position on anything political, I have
enjoyed watching Saturday Night Live and
its lampoon of our president. Since the ratings of the show is at an all-time
high, apparently so have a lot of others. http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/saturday-night-live-ratings-18-49-demo-melissa-mccarthy-1201978637/
I’d like to think that the audience has included members of all political
parties, religions, classes….
Rarity from the Hollow
is my debut novel. It is strong comedic and satiric political allegory not
obvious to most book reviewers until Donald Trump became a household name. The
novel is a project that has faced an interesting, discouraging, and inspiring
uphill climb since inception. I won’t bore you with the details, but if you
would like to read a satiric essay about an aspiring author’s introduction to
the World of Book, originally published in a beautiful print-only magazine in
2006, Wingspan Quarterly, the essay
was recently reprinted, in part, on a blog: “I Found God in Cyberspace” https://gottawritenetwork.wordpress.com/2016/10/25/i-found-god-in-cyberspace-by-robert-eggleton/comment-page-1/#comment-755.
My novel circulated
as an Advance Review Copy (ARC) for an extended period of time. Rarity form the Hollow received Gold
Medals from two prominent book review organizations, was named one of the best
books of 2015 by a Bulgarian Book critic, along with Revival by Stephen King and The
Martian by Andy Weir http://codices.info/2015/12/top-5-for-2015-ventsi/
, and received several five and four star reviews by experienced independent
book reviewers who post on Amazon. Only one reviewer picked up on a piece of
its political allegory, and she missed the prediction in the story that Donald
Trump would rise to political power. http://www.pr4us.com/pr-2618-trump-presidency-predicted-in.html
Wendy Tuck, a little known book reviewer whose blog has
since been closed, found that the ARC of my novel was: “…a scathing but almost
understated description of our consumption/shopping obsessed society. The greed
is absolutely mind-blowing and terrifying…. I didn't realize until half way
through that the idiosyncratic spelling of the planets' name was Shop Til You
Drop - and how deadly serious the powers-that-be were in making mindless but
competitive shoppers of everyone in the universe - which ultimately consumes
every resource and destroys every planet but the ‘winner’. That will stay with
me a long while.” https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1GZO2X6BU2VHB/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B007JDI508
The final edition of Rarity
from the Hollow was released to Amazon on December 5, 2016. On January 6,
2017, the first review of the final edition was published, five stars. The
closing lines were: "…Brilliant satires such as this are genius works of
literature in the same class as Orwell’s 'Animal Farm.' I can picture American
Lit professors sometime in the distant future placing this masterpiece on their
reading list." https://marcha2014.wordpress.com/2017/01/06/5-stars-for-rarity-from-the-hollowby-robert-eggleton/
On February17, 2017, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, a critic
whose book reviews often appear in the New York Review of Science Fiction,
published his review, five stars: "…I know this all sounds pretty whack, and it is,
but it's also quite moving. Lacy Dawn and her supporting cast - even Brownie,
the dog - are some of the most engaging characters I've run across in a novel
in some time…." http://sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com/
If
you are worn out by the ongoing bickering of political enthusiasts, yet remain
astute about the political issues of our times, consider the prospect that the
early tragedy in my novel amplifies subsequent comedy and satire. You would
have to read it to find out how Lacy Dawn, the
protagonist, an empowered victim of child maltreatment, convinced Mr. Rump
(Bernie Sanders) to talk to Mr. Prump (Donald Trump) about saving the universe.
The political allegory includes pressing issues that America is fighting about today,
including illegal immigration and the refuge crisis, extreme capitalism /
consumerism…. Part of the negotiations in the story occur in the only high rise
on planet Shptiludrp, a giant shopping mall and the center of economic
governance, now more easily identifiable as Trump Tower. There is no political
advocacy in the story, other than sensitizing readers to the huge social
problem of child maltreatment, but the allegory is much more obvious now that
Donald Trump is a household name.
This morning, I read an interesting and disturbing article about
Sweden
and its openness to accepting refugees. Once considered “silly” by some book
reviewers, while I don’t want to spoil the read for you if you are interested,
the characters of Mr. Prump and Mr. Rump in my story are played by giant
cockroaches, and the story addresses infestation by cockroaches. Here’s a link
to the article that I read this morning: http://freedomdaily.com/kick-the-cockroaches-out-sweden-to-deport-80000-muslim-refugees-over-migrant-linked-violence/
Half of author proceeds from Rarity from the Hollow are donated to support the prevention of
child maltreatment. A very touching audio about the nonprofit agency is here: http://www.childhswv.org/
Today, the 2018 Edition of Rarity from the Hollow Paperback was released on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2LfzP84. It is also available for Any eReader: https://bit.ly/2KNJkI2 Proceeds help abused children.
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