ORION SAINT / LITERARY FICTIONView the back cover
Literary fiction
Beyond the Horizon
Some things can be repaired. Others have to be heard.
Adrian Mercer has spent his life drawing places for other people. Now he has lost his job, his marriage is ending, and he has nowhere he knows how to belong.
His grandfather’s notebook leads him to a Cornish boatyard, an old brass key, and a woman called Mara. The people he meets remember a different man from the grandfather he loved.
As kindnesses and unpaid debts come to light, Adrian must learn what he can repair—and when to put down his plans and listen. A warm, wry novel about work, family, and the promises we inherit.
Revised complete edition · 18 chapters + prologue & epilogue · 104 pages
First 3 chapters free. One-time purchase includes the complete PDF and online reading edition.
Read an excerpt ↓FROM THE BOOK
Chapter One · The Last Day
The email arrived at 9:17 on a rainy Tuesday, while Adrian was trying to persuade a toilet to fit inside a room the client insisted on calling a wellness suite.
The room was four feet wide. Its opportunities for wellness were limited.
Subject: Corporate Restructuring Update.
He read the first paragraph, which thanked him for his contribution. The second explained that his contribution would no longer be required. The third invited him to a meeting about the opportunities arising from this development.
Across the office, someone laughed at a video.
Adrian saved the drawing. Then, because he had been trained thoroughly, he saved it again.
At ten, he sat in a glass room with a woman from Human Resources and a director whose graduation party he vaguely remembered attending.
"This isn't a reflection of your value," the woman said.
She had a folder in front of her. Adrian had nothing. He had considered bringing a pen, but it seemed presumptuous to assume his departure required his contribution.
The director nodded with an expression Adrian recognised from photographs of people visiting flood damage.
A LETTER WHEN THERE IS A STORY
Keep a place
on the shelf.
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