'Fevers' by Joel Homer:

Publisher-ebook: Zac Homer,
(April 20, 2014)
Publisher-Print: Bantam
Category: Action/Adventure, Suspense/Thriller, Some Romance Tour Date: May/June, 2015
Available in: Print & ebook,
261 Pages

FEVERS is a novel unlike any you have ever read. Exotic adventure, white knuckled suspense, torrid romance, and a haunting portrait of three damaged individuals – one man who has turned beast, one who must confront the beast within himself, and the woman torn between them. Rio de Janeiro. 1984. There are rumors that somewhere deep in the steamy rainforest of the Amazon a man, once civilized, is hiding in green shadows. To the primitive Brazilian Indios, he is considered their long-awaited "pale-skinned messiah." Others believe he is an evil god with powers to stir the native masses to a frenzied, killing pitch. And others suspect he might be Michael Fevers. Into the lush tropics comes a troubled American, rebellious journalist, embittered Vietnam vet, desperate soldier of fortune. William Straw, who soon forms an uneasy alliance with a beautiful anthropologist, continues his tortured upriver journey-from jungle shantytown to opulent plantation, from explosive passion to brutal murder. Whether he is pursuing a story, an adventure, or a chance to finally exorcise his own inner demons, nothing will prepare William Straw for the sudden violence and bizarre cruelty of the one who is waiting ahead -- Michael Fevers.

Praise for 'Fevers' by Joel Homer:

"Very engrossing novel. It felt a bit like reading a modern version of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The plot moves quickly and smoothly. The excitement never ends."- Gerald Loev, Amazon Reviewer

About Joel Homer:

Joel Homer was raised in Greenwich Village, attended New York University and was a medal-winning veteran from the Vietnam war. Upon returning to the states, he began his writing career as a senior editor at Saturday Review. His books include "Marathons" and "Jargon." His produced plays include "Scenes Dedicated to My Brother," "What People Do When They're All Alone," and "The Lieutenant Snuffs the Light." In 1984 he was the first recipient of the prestigious Glickman Award for playwriting. His last play 'Private Scenes" was a huge hit in San Francisco. While working in Los Angeles, he co-wrote the original script for "Beauty and the Beast" for EuroDisney....to date the most popular stage play in Disney's history. Joel Homer passed away in 2003 at the age of 58.

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Read an Excerpt

Night is implacable in the Amazon.
The moon floats cold and distant, and the earth is shrouded in shadow.
William Straw half led, half carried Doctor Aguzar out of the canteen and into the nocturnal gloom of Xueloc. No streetlamps graced the town, and the dark was relieved only by the scattered patches of pale yellow light that marked unshaded barraca windows and the open doorways of crowded saloons. The streets were crowded, with quarrelsome drunks, and hustlers, and bands of hungry children offering their sisters, mothers, selves.
It was not an easy journey.
The darkness and its inhabitants were challenge enough, the doctor even more of a burden. Aguzar slipped and stumbled on the gape-planked wooden sidewalk, virtual deadweight in Straw’s arms, all the while panting and gasping and weeping. But what truly unsettled the reporter was that the old man never stopped talking.
He kept on talking.
In two distinctly separate voices.
“Get me home to Evangalee,” the first voice, the more familiar one, said over and over again. “My daughter will know what to do.”
Interjected between these pleas for home, a second voice—the stronger voice, deeper toned and stentorian—rammed out threats and injunctions and doom-laden warnings nearly biblical in their obsession with retribution.
Somehow the doctor retained enough of his own will to point the way homeward. His barraca, indistinguishable in the night from any of the other shacks, squatted on the forestside of the village. In the yard, heard rather than seen, four grunting pigs snuffled through the earth for worms and grubs and the blind albino scorpions that nested under stones and roots.
Still supporting the exhausted and silent Aguzar, Straw entered the house.
The contrast of the interior to its grubby exterior was startling.
The house was small, of course, a single room with a curtained alcove, but immaculate and pleasingly designed. Indio paintings, bright and primal, hung on the freshly white-painted walls. Other artifacts—masks and totems and wooden sculptures, highly polished, of gods and chiefs, of fierce warriors and serene women—had been variously arranged all about the floor without creating clutter. The wicker furniture was functional yet delicate in contour. There were many pastel-shaded lamps, and the light they cast was warm and gentle, inviting. The entire space seemed shaped by a simplicity more innocent than elegant.
On the scrolled sofa sat a young woman, her head bowed, her neck exposed, her face hidden by the long lustrous fall of her sable hair. Sitting next to her, holding her reluctant hand, was a buoyant-bellied man resplendent in the uniform of a comandante. Two white-gloved policemen, one clearly embarrassed, the second clearly excited, flanked the sofa on both sides.
The F.S.U. agent, the Ferret last met on the boat to Xueloc, stood directly behind the girl. He was stroking her bent shoulders with a sensual, sinister indolence.
Straw liked neither the company nor the odds. He wasn’t much bothered by the dimpled Comandante or the apologetic policeman with the black eye. The Ferret, though, was a different matter, and he didn’t care for the promises in the second policeman’s mean grin, either.
Remember, he told himself, it’s not your fight.
The F.S.U. agent stepped out from behind the girl, arms outstretched in fellowship.
“At last! Doctor Aguzar! My dear, dear sir!”
Ignoring Straw completely, he took Aguzar by the elbow and began to gently shepherd him toward the hidden alcove.
“No cause for alarm, my good Doctor Aguzar. Your government just wishes to ask you some questions about a certain friend of yours, a certain Michael Fevers, just a few questions asked in confidence and in privacy.”
The F.S.U. agent swept back the alcove curtain and gestured him inside.
“Completely painless, I assure you,” he said.
The second policeman sniggered.
It’s not your fight, William Straw told himself again.
“Don’t hurt him,” the girl whispered, then repeated, in an outraged shout, “Don’t you dare hurt my father!”
The cry awoke Aguzar from his acquiescent stupor. He strained against the agent’s grip. “Evangalee!” he roared. “Evangalee! Evangalee!”
The second policeman, his smile widening like a pried-open wound, grabbed hold of the struggling doctor.
The F.S.U. agent took two precise steps backward, planted both feet solidly on the floor, clasped his two hands together, and swinging them in a wide, hard arc, clubbed Aguzar across the side of the head.
Not your fight, Straw told himself.
Aguzar collapsed. The girl cried out, wordlessly this time, and attempted to rise to her feet. The agent backhanded her across the face. She fell back on the sofa. “Brute!” she spit out at him. “Beast!” The Ferret raised a fist to strike again. The girl lifted her head defiantly.

It’s not your fuckin’ fight, Straw told himself. And he lunged across the room.