Toward Him Still begins with a Prelude enigmatically establishing Thomas—naming himself Jimmy—as a mute janitor in a high school and consists of various writings authored by him, in addition to an ongoing commentary by a teacher at the school who has come into possession of the notebooks and manuscripts belonging to Thomas and become captivated by what she reads and remembers of him while he was at the school.
Part One includes a first person narrative addressed to a Police Inspector and establishes Thomas on the run as a victim of mistaken identity; while Part Two continues his story in the third person and in the form of an extended letter sent by him to a priest named Father Martin, an old friend of his. Thomas is by then living on his own island in the Pacific Northwest. He is haunted by remembrances of his late wife and hunted, he claims, by the most powerful organization in the world. One that has for years sought to obtain from him a first principle equation of power that he denies them. Thomas believes that this organization murdered his wife to punish him for his intransigence.
As Martin makes his way through the manuscript he is nagged by his memory and annotates the text in anger, amusement and sorrow, increasingly piqued by doubts that Thomas is simply raving. Indulging with growing fascination in the morphine with which he injects himself to assuage the pain of a rotting hand, he is urged into adventure by a need to see his old friend and sets out by ferry to meet with him. On the ferry he becomes acquainted with a young woman who helps him reach his destination. In the process she becomes caught up in Father Martin's destiny and drawn by the spell of Thomas’s text.
Toward Him Still tells a story of love enduring beyond mortality, a tribute to the beauty of nature, friendship, and language, the limits of ingenuity in a world of loss, conflict and greed.
About the Author
Michael Okulitch is a Canadian citizen and a long time resident of Los Angeles. His literary novel, Toward Him Still, will come out from Fomite Press in fall 2024.
