JARED GLOVSKY
Author / Feature Writer
Opinionated Blowhard
The now....
The Sweet Charm of Distance (2015)
Untreed Reads / 263 Pages
"[AN] ENGROSSING STORY...CONVINCING, EASY TO KEEP UP WITH...COMPELLING CHARACTERS...DELICATELY TRACES [THE] PROCESS OF REUNION AND REINVENTION WITH A LIGHT HAND THAT DOESN'T OVERWHELM...A ROMANCE INFUSED WITH HUMOR AND IRONY..."
- D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review
"...COMPLEX, RICH IN DESCRIPTIVE LANGUAGE, THOUGH NOT OVERLY SO ...[A] BEAUTIFUL LOVE STORY [WITH] THE HOPE OF RECONCILIATION ... EVERYTHING "BOOMER LIT" SHOULD BE ... I RECOMMEND THIS BOOK, WITH NO RESERVATIONS..."
- Lynn Schneider, www.lynnschneiderbooks.com
"MORE LAYERS AND NUANCE THAN MANY MIGHT EXPECT FROM THE ROMANCE GENRE [...] SOMETHING SPECIAL [...] DALTON AND JACQUELINE ARE DYNAMIC, THEIR CHARACTERS UNIQUE [...] NO MATTER YOUR AGE, YOU WILL FIND SOMETHING IN THESE TWO THAT RESONATES..."
- Gigi Roelant, Volume One, Eau Claire, Wisconsin
"... [TAKING] A LOOK AT LOVE, LIFE AND THE BABY BOOM GENERATON..."
- Emily Miels, Leader-Telegram, Eau Claire, Wisconsin
Dalton Novak can’t really complain. He’s lived a charmed life. But he’s about to turn sixty, and lately, his days and nights have been spent coping with the shock of losing his wife and facing what's left of the future alone, in a world gone mad.
Then Jacqueline Purcell gets in touch with him, and all of a sudden Dalton must face his past as well.
When they met on New Year's Eve 1979, he and Jacqueline were each standing at crossroads. She was an idealistic college student about to graduate and looking to “save the world” at her husband’s side. He was a brooding townie, trying to keep his dream of becoming a writer alive, but watching anxiously as the years slipped past.
They became fast friends, an unlikely pair in a precipitous time. But left unchecked, their friendship evolved into a potent attraction, driven as much by vulnerability as desire. Boundaries were crossed, and what too easily became a secret love affair they had no business having, could not help but be forced to an abrupt - and unpleasant - end.
Thirty years later, they’re still standing at crossroads. Dalton has become a writer. He captured that dream, but has learned wealth and fame are no panacea. Jacqueline is divorced and completely disillusioned with her chosen path. Any remnants of the idealism she once cherished have long since dried up and blown away.
Beside a secluded New Hampshire lake, they reacquaint, recalling the spring of 1980 in the autumn of their years. It would be ideal if they could reconcile the past with the future, but Dalton has some unresolved feelings about how they left things so long ago, a lot of guilt over the life he's led since, and can’t help wondering if love is worth pursuing, or even possible, in a world that bears little resemblance to what he or his generation once knew, or could ever have imagined.
With biting humor lending punctuation to a strong sense of melancholy, The Sweet Charm of Distance is at once a timeless tale of star-crossed love, and a swan song for a generation.
“We made love - a slow, rhythm-less stirring in the grass beneath an apple tree in the spring of 1980 - moving with as much timeless tenderness as passion, tenderness that softened the edges of reality, insulated us from the harshness with which the entire world would have faulted us, unable, or unwilling, to regard our affair as anything but profane."
The then....
The Grace of Goodbye (2000)
Paradigm Press / 293 Pages
"MR. GLOVSKY HAS TALENT [...] A CROSS BETWEEN THE NUT-CASE HERO IN 'LETHAL WEAPON' AND MICKEY SPILLANE'S MIKE HAMMER [...] DANE DEFOREST'S INNER ANGST IS BOTH BELIEVABLE AND INTERESTING."
- Mike Nardine, The Northland Reader, Duluth, Minnesota
"... [A] NOVEL FULL OF SHADOWS AND PEOPLE WHO HAVE GONE OFF THE RAILS.'
- Carl Brookins, St. Paul Pioneer-Press, St. Paul, Minnesota
"[...] AN INTRIGUING TRIP INTO THE DARK SIDE OF SMALL TOWN LIFE [...] GLOVSKY MAKES EFFECTIVE USE OF HUMOR AND IRONY. THE RESULTING TABLEAU OF HUMAN EMOTIONS ARE STIRRED INTO A STEW OF LIES, BETRAYAL, GREED, VIOLENCE AND OLD SECRETS AS BLEAK AS THE NORTHWOODS MID-WINTER IN WHICH THEY ARE PLAYED OUT."
- Rick Olivo, The Daily Press, Ashland, Wisconsin
[DANE DEFOREST IS ON THE DARK SIDE OF THE USUAL SPENSER/TRAVIS MCGEE CROWD [...] WELL CRAFTED [...] A GOOD READ."
- 2002 Writer's Digest Book Awards
Lacking subtlty, even by crime fiction standards, this was as much an homage to the Robert B. Parker Spenser novels I spent my high school years reading as anything.
I was young when I wrote The Grace of Goodbye, and given a second chance, I would do some things differently. But hey, it might be said it is what it is, because I was what I was.
The Lake Superior Country In History and in Headlines (2002)
Paradigm Press / 200 Pages
"GLOVSKY [...] HAS MADE A CONTRIBUTION TO CHEQUAMEGON BAY HISTORY WHICH WILL BE LONG-LASTING."
- Eric Hjerstedt Sharp, County Journal - Washburn, Wisconsin
"[HEADLINES...] IS A FASCINATING READ, RICH IN THOUGHT-PROVOKING AND OFTEN AMUSING DETAIL [...] HIGHLY ENTERTAINING."
- Rick Olivo, The Daily Press, Ashland, Wisconsin
Researching this book was about as much fun as I've ever had sitting down: paging through old newspaper archives, cherry-picking items that speak to how things were at certain pivotal moments in history, and how it all applies to the region where I grew up - the north woods of Wisconsin. There's nothing about this book I would do differently; only dismayed I never had a chance to continue with a second and third volume.