Dogs' Letters to God

Book excerpt: The Buoy is a psycho-dramatic novel with spiritual overtones written to take the reader out of his day-to-day existence into a dimension that lies between life and death. This is a place of quasi-existence where one is forced to observe, but inhibited from interfering in the affairs of those into whose company he is thrust. There, he must watch helplessly while disastrous events unfold through an encounter with a castaway fisherman's buoy with bizarre properties. This buoy traps a scientist in a strange psycho- physical vortex that sweeps him out to sea. There, the scientist relives the events that brought the buoy to the shores of America in the first place. The drama unfolds over a hundred years and involves two ships, a nineteenth century sailing vessel, and a modern sophisticated diesel-powered vessel engaged in oceanographic research.