The Red Dress

Can fixing what’s broken inside us spread to fixing what’s broken greater than us? A soulful and surreal parable for our disconnected times. (Unnamed island in the Indian Ocean; near-future): Why do stories set around the sea awaken our senses and stir our sensibilities? Frank Huyler makes us feel he’s been around the ocean his whole life. Maybe he carves out time for yachting – since his character Nick, the narrator, instinctively understands, “Navigation is mathematics and order and time – when he’s not treating emergencies at a hospital in one of America’s landlocked states, New Mexico; and not immersed in dreaming up literary ideas for his novels. The Red Dress, his third. In spare, richly composed prose (230 pages), it packs-a-punch. After reading this spellbinding, mysterious, and provocative story that shifts between the poignantly real and personal to the hyper-unreal and impersonal, I’d go anywhere Huyler wants to steer us. In this case, to an unspecified, remote island in…