David A. Ross was born January 6, 1953 in Chicago, Illinois. In addition to his career as a novelist (Sacrifice and the Sweet Life, 2003, Escape Media; A Winter Garden, 2003, Escape Media; Stones, 2001, Escape Media; Xenos, 1998, Escape Media; The Trouble With Paradise; 1997, Escape Media), he is a former columnist and contributing editor for Southwest Art Magazine (1984-1985). His first novel, The Trouble With Paradise, was awarded third prize in the 1997 National Writer's Association Novel Competition. David A. Ross lives on the Island of Corfu, Greece.
Published Books by David A. Ross
The Trouble With Paradise
In this whimsical novel, a star-crossed weekend sailor is shipwrecked on a wayward South Seas island. Stranded there by the trickery of a Hawaiian kahuna, and accompanied only by his sagacious parrot, Julian Crosby eventually meets the island’s only other human resident, a soft-spoken siren who seems at once out of place yet somehow thoroughly natural to her environment.
As Julian is initiated by the longtime foundling in the ways of this Shangri-La, the female solitary alludes time and again to a past that seems to suggest a solution to one of the century’s inimitable mysteries – the disappearance of 1930’s flying ace Amelia Earhart. Is it somehow possible that the missing aviatrix is still alive?
One man, one woman: alone in paradise. But in the denouement of a ferocious storm, the castaway finds he must confront the preconceived limits of his courage and ingenuity, even in Paradise.
XENOS: A Romantic Novel of Travel and Self-Discovery in the Grecian Isles
Doran Seeger studied each face around the table. His newfound companion, Alarice Van Zyl, suddenly and miraculously understood Greek. Her sister, Gisela, was relying on him, he sensed, for something as yet unstated. Their Greek benefactor and friend, Modestos Thromos, yawned prodigiously, as he’d been at the dock late last night trolling for tourists. And Elena, Modestos’ discerning wife, looked anxious as she imagined the latest exploits of her debonair son.
For Doran, these once-unfamiliar images had become so compelling that he could only surmise: If I don’t tear myself away from this place immediately, I shall remain here forever, forget my concerns and responsibilities, and renounce my personal history once and for all.
Stones: A Novel of Art, Love, Intrigue and Magic in the South of France
A young Parisian sculptor, Cornelius Valentine, retreats to a tiny village in the South of France to escape a failing romance with his coquettish model, Arielle Pieronette, and to attempt his masterwork. There, in the tiny medieval village of Seillans, a delusional local artisan, Madame Sylvianne, confuses him with a figure in her past, the celebrated dada artist Max Ernst. Seeking revenge for unrequited love, she sets out to slowly poison the surrogate.
Caught between recollections of his recent past and a compulsion to cast his vision in stone, the sculptor cracks his masterwork on the final blow before its completion. Sick and alone in Provence, his spirit fades as his health declines from the gradual ingestion of Sylvianne’s poison.
Back in Paris, his estranged lover, Arielle, learns of his illness and travels to Provence to help him recover his health. But the failed sculpture has left a severe emotional and philosophical scar on the young artist. And the poison has taken its toll.
The story culminates in a dramatic (and twisted) Romeo and Juliet suicide pact between Cornelius and his lover, Arielle.
Motivated to expatriate by guilt and remorse after helping to design guidance systems and smart bombs for the U. S. Military, Doran Seeger has lived the past decade in Europe. Wandering from country to country, he has encountered new societies and new ideas, yet after ten years abroad he still struggles to appease his conscience. Living in Prague and working as an underground art dealer, a chance encounter with the sister of his former lover persuades him to return to Greece, where a society that embraces real civility, not to mention a few idiosyncrasies, tenderly draws the habitual itinerant out of reticence and cynicism. With his longtime Greek friend Modestos Thromos at his side, Doran plants a winter garden; and as he patiently tills the Grecian soil, he reclaims his integrity, his sense of joy, and his humanity.
“They had never felt the fall, never sensed their descent. They heard only a deafening rumble, and then there was darkness – only darkness and crushing weight…”
So begins a profound and disturbing collection of eight short stories, four poems and one vignette by award-winning writer and author of four previous novels, David A. Ross.
A lonely and deranged sorcerer; a noon-time Bozo, a local television-star; observant and bewildered tourists; angry, drunken cock-fighters; obedient anarchists; a guilt-ridden engineer; each one experiences the curious juxtaposition of the two overriding ideas contained within the collection’s title, Sacrifice and the Sweet Life.
In ‘NL Centrum,’ a drug-ruined anarchist proclaims, “The world theater maintains drama and tension through the perpetuation of greed and injustice and so forth…” In ‘La Sorcière de Seillans,’ a driven sculptor is obsessed to “explore the space within the stones,” and in ‘In Search of the Perfect Former-Communist Beach Town,’ a malcontented traveler observes, “Some of the locals are a bit surly, Sean, so let’s try to overlook ungracious behavior. Just enjoy the shore, the rich red wine and the paprika.” One thing is certain as Giuvanni, the lust-ridden Florentine hotel clerk laments, “In our world, sacrifice is unavoidable.”
