Publication Date: March 13, 2024
After his failed rescue of his brother Wyatt in a suspicious house fire, sixteen-year-old Russell Cobb wakes up from a coma, strangely mistaken for him and thrust into the middle of an arson investigation. Russell’s only hope, before his bandages come off, is to deduce the likeliest suspect in his troubled past or risk being charged with homicide. In view of his brother’s death, he begins to see his family, Wyatt’s enigmatic girlfriend Edie, and a school gang in a darker light, colored by deceit and possibly his own paranoia, until Edie turns the tables, tying his brother to an unimaginable crime.
Set against the idyllic backdrop of Aqua Verde, a mid-60s California beach town, ANEMONE addresses society at a moral crossroads when what went on behind closed doors was nobody’s business. Russell flees to a condemned seaside hotel where he joins a draft-dodging surfer, and later, a fugitive Edie, with whom he falls in love. Through a tangle of twists and traumatic revelations, and mentored by the surfer, Russell discovers more than he could have bargained for about her, his family, and the real target of the fire.
Brutal, gripping, and tragic, ANEMONE is a coming-of-age tale that deals with issues still relevant today. At its core is betrayal, emotional survival, and revenge within two ordinary families whose misdeeds bring about a reckoning from which no one emerges unscathed.
Jim Frazee impresses with his effusive vocabulary to tell the story of Anemone, the nickname of the younger of two sons in a more-than-dysfunctional, abusive family.
The bones of the storyline are that Russell, nicknamed “Anenome” by his heartless older brother, cannot find a way to fit into his family or his school community. He does everything right. But his brother’s evil manipulation, coupled with his father’s barbarous use of discipline, leaves Russell to survive by accepting this abuse.
But in a twist, a house fire kills his older brother and leaves Russell scarred enough to be mistaken as the golden child instead of himself. He doesn’t want to keep up the ruse and escapes from the burn hospital. As he looks for a hideout, his story then intertwines with a classmate who has also been abused by her father. Can they possibly escape together?
Yes, the bones of the story are as stated above, but the meat of the story is abuse. The description of physical and sexual abuse toward the two teenagers was told in such graphic detail that my mind could hardly hold onto the storyline. The novel takes several turns depicted with such expansive detail that it feels akin to a horror film where the enemy appears repeatedly and an epic where the next turn of events seems to go beyond reason.
What redeemed the novel for me was one chapter’s statement written much more eloquently than I could and explained the brutality as such:
It is easier to believe that a teenager is lying than to shatter the belief that a family is sacred and that parents don’t treat their children in inhumane ways.
Anemone is a novel that breaks open the truth that family does not guarantee love and safety.
Jim Frazee is a poet, former journalist, and author of the debut novel, ANEMONE. He has contributed to the New York Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the McClatchy newspaper group, the American Poetry Review, the Virginia Quarterly Review, Columbia, Seneca Review, The Iowa Review, the Montana Review, the North American Review, MSS, the Southern Poetry Review, and the Missouri Review, among others.
He has worked in the film industry in the U.S. for Paramount Pictures and repertory cinema chains, and in Scandinavia, primarily in independent film acquisition, development, financing, and production. His film production work can be viewed here.
At eighteen, he studied classical guitar with Andres Segovia-protégé, José Tomás, in Alicante, Spain, and later with Robert Guthrie, in Dallas, Texas.
He grew up in Southern California, began surfing in 1963, and now lives with his wife in Oslo, Norway.
