Our world is assailed by its enormous weight of humanity. Enough people going about their lives in reckless, dangerous ways sufficient to bring on the End Times. But life on this planet forms a huge collective Being, and it is not without its resources. The World Ash Tree, or Yggdrasil, carries a titanic flow of power and information between the underworld and the heavens. An avatar of this Ash is in the Catskill mountains, in themselves a source of great spiritual strength.
Here we find two men of extraordinary substance working together as skilled harvesters in the forest. They are unknown to the world, and like others of their rare kind, they themselves are without knowledge of who they are. But they are possessed of great strength and uncompromising Justice. These two are called out through Yggdrasil to become warriors in the cause of the Earth. The summons, accepted with free will, takes them to a trial at the edge of mortality, and perhaps beyond. They prove themselves without compromise and move on separately to lives committed to service.
But the trial has wrought other, darker changes in each man. A part of each of them stands in shadow. In time, with deep study, one finds a path out of this shade and knows he must share it with his comrade, whom he has not seen or contacted in over half a lifetime. He issues his own summons, and this is also one that cannot be denied.
Harold "Dusty" Dowse was born in Albany, NY and raised there and in the tiny town of Stillwater. He is a graduate of The Albany Academy, Amherst College, and New York University (Ph.D.). Upon receiving his Doctorate, he and his wife moved to Grahamsville NY, where they dwelled until moving to Maine. During this interval he worked as an electrician, short order cook, cabinet maker and then as a woodsman. He ultimately gained employment at the University of Maine and served there until retirement with professorships in Biology, Mathematics and Statistics, and Bioresource Engineering. He is now Emeritus. He has numerous refereed publications in areas of biological rhythms, signal analysis, and the molecular underpinnings of cardiology. He remains active in research. He is a published poet and writes short stories in the science fiction and fantasy genre. Dusty now operates a wood-fired artisan bakery and is a third degree blackbelt, Shotokan style, maintaining his own dojo.
"The novel called Sometimes I Wake Up and Think I'm Still in Nebraska, authored by Dusty Dowse, is a fine read: It really moves the reader along, via a combination of imagination, intelligence, & humor. One is tempted to describe that work as picaresque (a good thing!); shades of The Sotweed Factor. And even though I never met Mr. Barth, the author of that work, I should mention that I have long known Dusty D. Accordingly, I could not help discerning certain autobiographical elements distributed through his book: an extra good thing, owing to the author's rich, full, and interesting life. And even though most readers would not know, or care about that feature of the novel, the key factor is that they are in for a fine reading experience if they opt to acquire, then delve into it, which they should do." - Jeffrey Hall, Ph.D. Nobel Laureate; author of The Stand of the U.S. Army at Gettysburg
"Dusty Dowse is a Renaissance-type of man who has a vast range of interests and knowledge. He is not only an author, but also a professor emeritus in biology, a researcher in fields that would be considered esoteric, a Zen baker, and a mountain man. His recently published book, 'Sometimes I Wake Up and Think I'm Still in Nebraska,' is fiction, but so compelling in the vivid and detailed descriptions of the protagonist, a leading scientist named Larry Vintner, and one other main character, I can't help but wonder if each of those characters represents an aspect of the author. You will be drawn in by the stories which make the book hard to put down." - Erica M. Elliott, MD Author, speaker, mountaineer, and Medical Doctor. Her current work is From Mountains to Medicine-Scaling the Heights in Search of my Calling.
"The best compliment for any writer is that he told a good story and it was based on his own life. Dusty Dowse is twice blessed; he lived an original life and came up with an even more original story. His long and rich resume makes a worthy template for Larry, the protagonist of 'Sometimes I Wake Up and Think I'm Still In Nebraska.' Larry is a professor of some arcane branch of computer science at an unnamed university in Cambridge, Mass., an unlikely destination for a man who started out as a logger in the northern Catskills and is drawn back to the mountain forests by his love of climbing and a need for solace. The mystique of the forest and its eerie natural phenomena, some explicable, some inexplicable, looms over everything. One of these is a magnificent ash tree that casts a spell over all who see it and becomes the locus for a violent clash between a youthful Larry, who wants to save it, and his brutish employer, Jimmy, who wants cut it down. The ensuing fight between them sends Jimmy fleeing into the deep woods believing he has killed Larry. But Larry survives and both men are thrust into their own personal quest for the meaning of what brought them to such a terrible moment. When the two old combatants meet again, as we know they must, the denouement is ingenious, astounding and satisfying emotionally and intellectually. I was left wanting more." - Paul Mann Author of Season of the Monsoon, winner of the New York Times Notable Book of the Year award
"Not often does a longtime friend and colleague from an academic science department ask you to read his novel. I quickly saw that it drew heavily on the author's own experiences in New York and New England. Reminiscence or novel, it is a good story, with its blend of historical facts and quirks of human nature. The hardscrabble reality of rural New York pervades. Prof. Dowse is versed in crafting scientific publications, with a clean style. His novel flows well and is eminently readable. It follows the career of the central character, Larry Vintner, a top-notch international climate scientist. His 'sense of trees' along with his feeling for all 'things that flow' allow him to 'hear them talking in the forest floor.' But this mysticism is blended with scientific discussions of non-equilibrium thermodynamics and heat transfer in self-organizing systems involved in the formation of hurricanes. This marvelous book will especially interest readers who can recall how the world has changed in the past four-plus decades. Academics, especially scientists, will enjoy his wry treatment of the familiar politics, culture, and personalities of their domain. Thoughtful readers will be drawn to reflect on why we are here, where we are headed, and the importance of the relationships that make us human, including our connections with non-humans. Books such as this are good arguments against a dehumanized future where with composition by EI (Ersatz Intelligence) literature can't flourish." - Malcolm Shick, Ph.D. is Emeritus Professor of Zoology and Oceanography, University of Maine, and author of Where Corals Lie.
"'Sometimes I Wake Up and Think I'm Still in Nebraska' is a classic—a hardcore underground working-class novel somewhat reminiscent of nineteenth-century novelist Thomas Hardy with a touch of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, and Annie Proulx, but more blue-collar and engine-and-motor-savvy. It's a rare novel that can teach you about Johann Sebastian Bach's music and how machines work at the same time." - Richard Grossinger, Ph.D. Curator of Sacred Planet Books at Inner Traditions, and author of Bottoming Out the Universe: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing.
"Okay, boomers. This is a story for you. It's about two men, casual friends who are also loggers: one the boss, the other his employee. They've followed different paths to this place in their lives. One day on the job they find themselves faced with events they can't explain. A moment of sudden, jarring violence scatters them into the wide world again, with more questions than ever.Dusty takes us along their journey through insights and experiences of a life overlapping two centuries. The dialogue is real; the experiences, locations and events of recent decades are familiar to any of us that have lived through them. The story doesn't answer every question raised or tie up every loose end – just like life. It does give the reader much to think about. And that is, in itself, a rare and wonderful thing." - Diane Genthner has 20+ years’ experience as a trade book buyer at B Dalton and the UMaine Bookstore, and also holds a MA in English. She writes fiction privately as well.
