Theirs is a truly multifaceted cat and mouse relationship – one driven by Jarod who holds the key to many of the emotional secrets at her very core, secrets that fuel her relentless drive to recapture him. Leading The Centre hunt for Jarod is the sexiest woman on the planet, the complex, bitch-on-wheels, Miss Parker, a tenacious woman Jarod has known since childhood. Then there are those who simply want Jarod dead.Īll the while he must stay a step ahead of his relentless pursuers from The Centre, who want him recaptured at any cost – alive – preferably.

The dangerous worlds he infiltrates as a Pretender are rife with intense scrutiny, constantly threatening his complex ruses to exposure. Stolen as a child and raised and exploited for his genius by The Centre, the now free Jarod vows to discover the truth about who he is, where he came from and the location of his real family.īut much like the challenges Jason Bourne faces, seeking answers about his identity and taking care of the wrongs he’s trying to right, Jarod’s path in the outside world is fraught with roadblock after roadblock.

But surely a piece or two of crockery could be sacrificed for the sake of “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”.But while Jarod is capable of becoming anyone he wants to be, the heart-rending truth is – he doesn’t know who he himself is.

Others might question the propriety of allowing a drunken Jack Kerouac and Gore Vidal to stumble upstairs and consummate their friendship in a room turned brothel-red by the neon Hotel Chelsea sign. Some might raise an eyebrow upon hearing Jane Bowles scream at her husband Paul, “I’ll get you for this you’ve ruined my uterus!” during one of their visits en route to Morocco. Some might complain about the noise of shattering crockery during Thomas’s domestic disputes with his wife of Wolfe pacing the halls, reciting lines from You Can’t Go Home Again in the wee hours. He revered artists but lacked practicality – and so proved to be the perfect host for Dylan Thomas, Brendan Behan, Thomas Wolfe and other alcoholics who had been banned from every respectable hotel in town. The Great Depression was good for the Chelsea (or at least for its artist-residents), as it succumbed to bankruptcy and was bought for a song by a syndicate of Hungarian immigrants headed by hotelier David Bard.

Rebirth by Steven Long Mitchell