Candle-Ends: Reviews
Shelley Carpenter

Buried Gold by Bill Lockwood

I had the recent pleasure of reading Bill Lockwood’s novel, Buried Gold (Wild Rose Press, 2016), an adventure story that seems odd to call historical fiction, but historical it is as it takes place in the 1980s, which has become retro-cool within today’s popular culture. The location is Long Island, New York and the story moves back and forth through time as two plots intertwine: the main storyline and an old family mystery that takes place during the American Prohibition Era. Lockwood writes with authority and keeps the reader rooted in the eighties with references to famous people, music, and more. He does not miss a single beat in Buried Gold whose main characters are Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers.

The best adventures have mystery at their core. Buried Gold begins with a deathbed revelation that propels main character, Evie, a thirty-something mother, and her teenage daughter, Cindy, into motion. Lockwood also doesn’t waste any words as each chapter sets up the next one like carefully-placed dominoes.

The novel is told in incremental flashbacks about Evie’s family and how the treasure—a buried cache of ten-dollar gold coins came to be hidden. As a reader who loves setting, I particularly enjoyed this aspect of the story.

The 1920s and 1930s were a very exciting time in the American landscape. Indeed, it brings to mind the age of Gatsby, the glamour, as well the darker side where certain illegal activities operated in the shadows. Lockwood makes these events real. The long-dead characters are resurrected at the site of the old Oyster House where seafood was a front for a more lucrative family business—smuggling.

Some of Lockwood’s character’s shine in this regard. I particularly liked “Old Pete,” the crazy old man terrified of eels who worked for Evie’s great-grandfather, Captain John, back in the day. “I’ve seen it here on TV. In a barrel from the oyster boats. Buried like the pirates done. Yo-ho-ho…” Old Pete often babbled nonsensical talk but not everything he said was fantasy.

The characters of Evie and Cindy, the two main protagonists, remind me of an alternate universe version of the Gilmore Girls, another single mother and teenage daughter team from the popular TV show in the early 2000s who had many adventures and misadventures on the small screen. However, I admit that even though the characters are sympathetic, I had little empathy for Evie, who in her treasure quest manipulates and uses other characters to her own ends. True, she is an underdog character when compared to the villains of the novel, her older brothers who bully her and have this strange love/hate relationship with her. Yet, I stuck with her and as I read more and got to know Evie better, she made sense to me. I began to see that her moral compass appeared to be in sync with the lifestyle of the early eighties and the big events that influenced that time such as the women’s movement in the seventies when women began to assert their own agendas and careers—like Sally Ride, the first woman astronaut in space, and rocker Kim Carnes whose “popular song” (“Bette Davis Eyes”) Lockwood anonymously references as a possible personality reference to Evie. Both are well-placed footnotes early on in the novel.

In this regard, Evie is no different than anyone else of her generation except perhaps more determined. She has grit. She could be another Charlie’s Angel as she uses all she has to get the job done. Casual sex was a hallmark of 1980s, as well as excessiveness, decadence, and violence which again, effectively dovetails with the flashbacks to the Prohibition Era. And Evie’s world shares similar qualities all within the context of Lockwood’s story. Lockwood’s short historical introduction prior to the first chapter sets the mood effectively, laying the groundwork for the reader’s imagination.

Another notable point in Buried Gold is the description:

Captain Andy’s Fishing Station smelled like dead fish and gasoline, but the smell was overpowered by the view of the bay and the picturesque pleasure boats bobbing at their moorings by the restaurant next door.

I can only say that I’ve been to Long Island once or twice, but the way Peconic Bay is described, I might recognize it just from the detail alone. Moreover, the characters interact and move about with precision and the reader is firmly grounded in all aspects of movement, setting, and storyline.

The dialogue is spot-on, too. The language is as diverse as the characters. Not only can I hear them, but I can see them, too. The characters each have their appropriate share of grace; their humanity is present and they appear in the flesh. In the end, isn’t that what readers look for?

*

Bill Lockwood is a retired social services worker for Maryland and Vermont. He was an avid community theater participant in the early 1990s where he wrote reviews and feature articles for the Baltimore Theater Newsletter and the Bellows Falls Town Crier of Vermont. He was awarded the Greater Falls Regional Chamber of Commerce Person of the Year in recognition of his work as Chairman of the Bellow Falls Opera House Restoration Committee. Lockwood has four published short stories and recently published his first novel, Buried Gold. He lives in New Hampshire.

Shelley Carpenter is TC‘s reviews editor. Email: harpspeed[at]toasted-cheese.com