God Comes to Black Pool
The End of the Beginning
London, 3 April 1916
—Come with me, Jacob. See the world…
His hands in his pockets, he is running behind. Turning into Pelham Crescent, trampling over grass, the dew, he elects to meet his friend via shortcut, forward hunched in haste and in private analysis.
Deng, Ding, Deng, Ding.
Somewhere, a bell chides him. Late again, though they could not face why, neither him nor the friend he hurries to meet. Prawns, champagne, slender boats of Belgian endive, toast points, little terrines of patê. He ducks past a newsstand, the front pages splashed in repetition over its ledges. WAR, they say, but he does not stop to read.
The street is busy so he takes another, west to go east, but it will be quick. Perry will tell him his feelings are hurt, his pride is wounded, but then he will smile and call the garçon with a curl of his gloved finger to pour the drinks.
A drop of rain stains the white of his collar and he's picking up his heels now, veering left then hanging right, pressing down his hat when he ducks beneath umbrellas. Another drop and then another. The London sky looks thick and mottled. Behind the clouds—the mourner’s veil—a Zeppelin scrapes across its canvas, belly of lead, hidden from sight.
The Number 2 Route bus joins the road like a cherry-colored fire engine and in the crowd that waits at the stop, Jacob chances to see his friend, the dark blue suit with angular shoulders, the hat from Paris that tilts hello. “Thought I’d try and do you one better,” the friend would say if when they met, joining arms to walk in step. The bus will stop so it’s safe to cross, his usual route, though he missed it before and had to make haste, never keeping much money in his suit and preferring not to flag down a cab. He waves his arm and calls a name, sealing a glance and a puckering grin, pausing in the street for a bicycle’s bell, then a droning throb, an arrow that whistles. A maiming crack of brilliant light and the bus explodes by an airborne bomb, the stars in the heavens tinkling from the force of it; a sky of shattered glass.
The heat that follows comes in waves. Deaf, first, like the angry wind over the scorched red desert. Then, blindly, like a wall. The angry wind is spiteful, strong, and carries broken things up high into the air—suspended in a half-breath, in a purgatory. But the wall of heat is impossibly stronger, charging like a rhino god, hurling jagged mass in flight, jaws wide open, lashing death. The two kinds of heat lift Jacob off the ground and throw him backward several breathless yards through the burnt air and onto the street, where something shiny dashes the skin beneath his hairline to leave a scar, his edges singed, unable to feel. He tries lifting his arms, his legs, then thinks it better to lie still instead, with a ringing in his ears that sounds like a siren, or maybe like a bird. Unable to move, he focuses on the sound, shrill like a sharp bell. It grows tall and rounded then wavers into sobs. Vivid orange lights rise and fall into red. Metal shifts under fire, and then a voice.
“Free Ireland! England out!” it calls from the smoke.
The police are there and they blow their whistles, chasing the voice with their heavy boots and sticks until they shoot it down dead in the street. Someone presses on Jacob’s neck and he tries to tell them, not now, please, for he’s running very late now, late to meet his friend sat across the table from him in Manhattan.
—So, Jacob. What do you think? He taps the ash from his black clove cigarette, leaning back with two gloved hands, one coyest smile.
—You’re too generous, Mr. Perry. I could never accept.
—Please, call me Jordan. Or Perry. Or whatever else you want for that matter. But why not?
Perry leans forward, his palms flat on the table.
—Tell me, Jacob. When was the last time you rode on the back of an elephant through the jungles of Indochina? Or, passenger a sailboat off the Western coast of Australia, where humpbacked whales spray you with a salted mist, their great, big eyes gleaming up at you through turquoise waters. Hmm? Street markets in manic Hong Kong. Midnight Tango festivals in Madrid. Moroccan ladies with upturned slippers and tiny bells on their hips that sing last night's secrets as they walk…Believe me, my friend. You owe it to your soul to accept…
The ambulance does not yield around the bends and the jostling of the gurney wakes Jacob from his dream; the call for Irish freedom burning like a black hole in his mind.
^^
Title: God Comes to Black Pool
Genre: Upmarket/Literary Historical Fiction
Age Range: Adult
Word Count: 58,000
Author Name: Natalie J. Woociker
Why Your Project is a Good Fit: I’ve been following Mark Gottlieb and Trident Media for some time now. Their vast range of clientele, and the faith that Trident imbues into their client relationships struck me as the hard-fighting, old-school meets new-school, purpose driven kind of people I’m here to work with.
The Hook: GOD COMES TO BLACK POOL, written in the style of THE ESSEX SERPENT and THE RAGGED EDGE OF NIGHT, follows Jewish-American Jacob Sibel as he attempts to avenge the untimely death of his friend in 1916 Dublin, unaware that a long-awaited Republican uprising will fracture the city in one week’s time. But when a chance meeting leads to a complicated companionship between Jacob and Patrick Pearse, infamous leader of the clandestine liberation group, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, Jacob becomes entangled with the very people he seeks to silence.
Synopsis: After surviving a London bus bombing that kills his closest friend and implicates rebel Irish nationalists for the crime, gentle-mannered Jacob Sibel arrives to Dublin in the wake of WWI, emboldened by his brush with death to plan and serve the unthinkable. He does not, however, plan for Patrick Pearse. Painfully private and personally withdrawn from the public eye at a time when all of Dublin was watching him, Patrick finds recurring comfort in Jacob’s quiet countenance. Driven by the promise of reprisal such a friendship may yield, Jacob acquiesces to Patrick’s spellbinding nature, his coy advancements, the latter willfully removed from his own leading role when the Irish Republican Brotherhood come knocking on Jacob’s door for the take.
Yet, Dublin town has another secret, hidden from time. Jacob’s accidental discovery of the Ashkenazi neighborhood, “Little Jerusalem”, proffers him keys to both his salvation and his spiritual undoing when a determined young woman whispers news of Palestine, where, like in Dublin, a fledgling nation begins to rise.
Tempted by power as an antidote to fear and longing, Jacob has six days before the coming of a bloody Easter insurrection to reconcile his search for God with a godless want of Patrick Pearse’s demise as both men search for meaning across the Passover holiday in a near-biblical Dublin before the Easter Rising.
Target Audience: Readers of Sarah Perry, Jess Kid, Hilary Mantel, Anthony Doerr, Aimee Bender. Historical Fiction fans who enjoy genre-bending, corporeal descriptions and accessible literary fiction.
Bio: Natalie Woociker is a native Floridian. She studied Photography at the University of Florida and Social Practice in the Creative Environment at the Limerick School of Art + Design in Limerick, Ireland. Her life abroad and the time she has spent traveling revealed in her that which we all share—a desire to express oneself freely in life—and is the underlying theme in most of her written work. She has been a writer since she learned how to use a computer in the 1st grade, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2017 for her creative non-fiction. She currently lives in her hometown of Enterprise, Florida where she recently completed the historical fiction manuscript, GOD COMES TO BLACK POOL, set in 1916 Dublin.
Platform: Growing Instagram following. @sheynfroy
Education: MA in Social Practice in Art from the Limerick School of Art + Design in Limerick, Ireland; BFA in Creative Photography from the University of Florida in Gainesville
Experience: I have previously been published for Creative Non-Fiction in Golden Walkman Magazine and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2017. My Flash Fiction piece, Jerusalem, is set to be published in 805 Lit. I lived and studied in Ireland where my novel is set.
Personality: In love with life and totally passionate about sharing my writing with the world. I know myself well and have a great love of others and of collaboration. Always striving for perfection in my work.
Writing Style: Lyrical. Deeply visual/ Cinematic. Dialogue-as-music. Bending, but not breaking, linear timelines.
Likes/Hobbies: Warm weather, travel, Irish culture, Israel, cycling, cooking from scratch, using my hands to make things and fix things.
Hometown: Enterprise, FL
Age: 32