Blog Tour, Review & Giveaway: The Ancestor by Lee Matthew Goldberg

Last month, Lee Matthew Goldberg’s latest book, THE ANCESTOR was published. I’m so happy to be participating in the blog tour for this book and am excited to be able to host a giveaway for this book. Read my review and see below for details on the giveaway!!! (GIVEAWAY CLOSED)

Title: The Ancestor

Author:  Lee Matthew Goldberg

Published: August 2020, All Due Respect

Format: ARC Paperback, 348 pages

Source: Publisher via TLC Booktours

 

Summary: 

A man wakes up in present-day Alaskan wilderness with no idea who he is, nothing on him save an empty journal with the date 1898 and a mirror. He sees another man hunting nearby, astounded that they look exactly alike except for his own beard. After following this other man home, he witnesses a wife and child that brings forth a rush of memories of his own wife and child, except he’s certain they do not exist in modern times—but from his life in the late 1800s.

After recalling his name is Wyatt, he worms his way into his doppelganger Travis Barlow’s life. Memories become unearthed the more time he spends, making him believe that he’d been frozen after coming to Alaska during the Gold Rush and that Travis is his great-great grandson. Wyatt is certain gold still exists in the area and finding it with Travis will ingratiate himself to the family, especially with Travis’s wife Callie, once Wyatt falls in love. This turns into a dangerous obsession affecting the Barlows and everyone in their small town, since Wyatt can’t be tamed until he also discovers the meaning of why he was able to be preserved on ice for over a century.

A meditation on love lost and unfulfilled dreams, The Ancestor is a thrilling page-turner in present day Alaska and a historical adventure about the perilous Gold Rush expeditions where prospectors left behind their lives for the promise of hope and a better future.

The question remains whether it was all worth the sacrifice…

 

My thoughts:

I have to say, this book was a little out of my comfort zone, yet I was totally intrigued by the premise. The cover absolutely pulled me in and I found that while time travel is not my typical type of read, I actually enjoyed this one.

I love books set in Alaska and Lee Matthew Goldberg definitely knows how to set the scene, making you feel like you are right there in the cold along with his characters. I got such a strong sense of place while reading this and that always adds such an unique layer to the story. As for the time travel part, this really amped up the thriller/suspense part of the book because I had no idea where it was heading. Combining family saga with the time travel, but adding in family drama, greed, small town life, acceptance and a slew of other issues, this book really kept my interest and I found that I kept coming up with ideas as to where I thought things might end up only to fall short every time. But that’s okay because this book really kept me thinking and I loved that!

While I didn’t love all the characters, I loved that they were all realistic. I loved the relationships and how they were portrayed. Ever so slowly the layers were peeled back to reveal just who Wyatt was both to us the reader and to Travis, and while I sometimes wished this happened a bit quicker, in the end, I think the timing was just right.

This book really took me by surprise and I’m so glad I agreed to read it. The writing is perfectly matched for the frozen Alaskan landscape – crisp and stark. It doesn’t get overly wordy and is at times quite gritty, but it matches the story it tells and works quite well. This is the first book I’ve read by this author and I definitely want to check out his other books, especially if they are anything like this.

 

About the author:

Lee Matthew Goldberg is the author of THE DESIRE CARD, SLOW DOWN and THE MENTOR from St. Martin’s Press. He has been published in multiple languages and nominated for the 2018 Prix du Polar. The second novel in The Desire Card series, PREY NO MORE, is forthcoming. THE ANCESTOR will be out from All Due Respect books in 2020 along with a reissue of his debut novel. His pilots and screenplays have been finalists in Script Pipeline, Book Pipeline, Stage 32, We Screenplay, the New York Screenplay, Screencraft, and the Hollywood Screenplay contests. After graduating with an MFA from the New School, his writing has also appeared in the anthology DIRTY BOULEVARD, The Millions, The Montreal Review, and others. He is the co-curator of The Guerrilla Lit Reading series (guerrillalit.wordpress.com). He lives in New York City.

 

Author links:  Website  |  X  |  Facebook  | Instagram

 

Purchase Links:    Amazon | Down & Out Books

Be sure to check out all the other stops on the blog tour and follow the tour on Twitter (hashtags:  #TLCBookTours & #theancestor).

 

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Giveaway Details — (US  only) Thanks to the publisher, one reader will win a copy of The Ancestor by Lee Matthew Goldberg.
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