Review by JBook16 -- Searching For Paradise by T.L.Hughes

[JBook16]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Searching For Paradise" by T.L.Hughes.]

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3 out of 4 stars

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Feeling as if "Life was still one big riddle that needed to be solved", Mike Hogan is determined "to figure it out before it was all over." And so he and two friends (confessed California Orphans who met at Huntington Beach) set out in a Ford Fairlane bound for Boston in T.L. Hughes' novel Searching for Paradise.

The transcontinental drive is just the first leg of the journey though, and the triad plans to extend their search and continue to London and Europe. So their trek has to be economical and they utilize their family and friends who live along the way for rest, lodging and food, with Mike recording "the whole journey in a crazy journal".

Set in 1984, Mike's scribblings in his notebook provide much more than a travel journal! He is a dreamer and the novel is filled with detailed explanations of his dreams. Dreams as in ideals or goals and the actual dreams he has when asleep or upon waking. He recounts love lost, and stories of his childhood; and muses about his upbringing, values, religion, and people in general. It is filled with visual descriptions of the scenery they traverse and the roads and highways they travel. And the days and evenings spent while staying with family and friends. And music, especially Rock n Roll, is a constant, playing in the background like the radio.

Since the novel is presented as a person's journal, the narrative can get ponderous at times, so chock full of specific details (like the cost of gas) as it is. Not too much "happens" to propel the story. But the story is not the point, really, of this story. As Mike says, "Everyone's life was a story, and every story had a lot of good in it. But there were so few storytellers to realize all that good and find a way to touch us with it."

If you still stop and smell the roses, if you still ask the big questions, if you enjoy hearing about how things once were, and if the journey is more important than the destination, Searching for Paradise and T.L. Hughes' follow-up novel The Sojourners (which picks up with Mike's journal as the friends arrive in London) are worthwhile reads. It earns 3 out of 4 stars.

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Searching For Paradise
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