While jogging one evening on Fort Lauderdale beach, psychologist Jennifer Hart, 32, hears a jazz piece from the 1920s drifting towards her from a nearby bar. This triggers
a memory causing her to have a psychic meltdown. She flees but is caught and Baker acted by county cops called to the scene and ends up sedated in a psychiatric unit.
This marks a beginning of confrontation with memories from an abusive past life.
A fast paced medical thriller ensues to rediscover her principle identity. Pasting back fractured pieces of forgotten memories Jo, an orphan of Taurus, receives a little help from her friends, a loyal and lovable group all of whom must embark on a dark forensic journey of transformative self discovery.
Through song, dream and diary, Jo is met in secret disclosures whose images paint a horrific picture, a past life of sexual and physical abuse at the hands of Pablo her father, psychopathic family killer in the House of Giral. All one can do is watch and wait as this charged group is propelled towards a new found justice of recognizance and consilience, a destiny of transformative karmic judgement passed forward at birth.
While jogging one evening on Fort Lauderdale beach, psychologist Jennifer Hart, 32, hears a jazz piece from the 1920s drifting towards her from a nearby bar. This triggers
a memory causing her to have a psychic meltdown. She flees but is caught and Baker acted by county cops called to the scene and ends up sedated in a psychiatric unit.
This marks a beginning of confrontation with memories from an abusive past life.
A fast paced medical thriller ensues to rediscover her principle identity. Pasting back fractured pieces of forgotten memories Jo, an orphan of Taurus, receives a little help from her friends, a loyal and lovable group all of whom must embark on a dark forensic journey of transformative self discovery.
Through song, dream and diary, Jo is met in secret disclosures whose images paint a horrific picture, a past life of sexual and physical abuse at the hands of Pablo her father, psychopathic family killer in the House of Giral. All one can do is watch and wait as this charged group is propelled towards a new found justice of recognizance and consilience, a destiny of transformative karmic judgement passed forward at birth.
March 9, 2022
The music drifted around her, a jazz piece she recognized from the 1920s. It boomed from the open doors of a bar or restaurant on Fort Lauderdale Beach and drew Jennifer “Jo” Hart like metal to a magnet.
She jogged here five evenings a week but never had done so on a Saturday evening, when the snowbirds were out in droves, enjoying the incredible South Florida weather. She loped through the dusk to the next intersection, and when traffic stopped, she trotted across the street, eager to see who was playing “Farewell Blues” by the New Orleans Rhythm Kings. Even when she thought of the name, she wondered how she knew. She’d always loved jazz in any form, but especially jazz from the twenties. She’d never studied it, didn’t play an instrument, yet for some strange reason this particular piece haunted her.
Midway down the street, the music got louder. She followed it into a large bar, the Bourbon Street Club. The place rocked with music that came from the stage, where an ethnically diverse band of seven men and one woman played “Farewell Blues.” She made her way up to the bar, ordered a bottle of water, and just stood there, watching them play a variety of instruments with such precision and soul that they could’ve been the New Orleans Rhythm Kings—except that the group from the twenties had consisted of eight white men.
How do I know that?
She didn’t have an answer, and that bothered her. But the longer she listened, the less the answer mattered. Her foot tapped to the rhythm, her body swayed, the music transported her.
She is fourteen, like Santiago Garcia, and they hurry through town, eager to hear the music. They aren’t allowed to be here without an adult, but who will know? Their nannies are napping. They probably haven’t heard that the Rhythm Kings are playing near the Las Olas drawbridge. It isn’t like the city fathers or anyone else announced it. All word of mouth, from one neighbor to another.
She can hear the music now, and she and Santiago glance at each other and walk faster, faster. Pretty soon they are running, clutching each other’s hands, and suddenly, she sees them, the eight musicians on a makeshift stage. Sunlight spills over them, their instruments glint in the light, and “Farewell Blues” fills the sea air.
“Beautiful.” Santiago throws his arms out to his sides. “The music, the place, the smell of the air ...”
Then someone comes up behind them. “What the hell are you doing here, young lady?”
She and Santiago spin around, and her father stands there, his cheeks puffed out with rage, his eyes dark and large, his hands fisted at his sides. Her younger brother, Raul, is slightly behind him. She steps back, and Santiago steps forward. “Sir, we heard the band was going to be here and ...”
“I don’t give a goddamn what you heard, boy.”
Jo wrenched back, deeply shaken, and glanced around wildly. Several people stood on either side of her now, and it seemed they stared at her like they knew she was struggling. The band played on. Jennifer made her way through the crowd, murmuring, “Excuse me, excuse me.” She made it to the front door and hurried out into the evening.
She ran. It didn’t matter where or in what direction, as long as she got away from here, from the music that had triggered the memory or flashback or whatever the hell it was. Run, run as fast as you can, away from that music, away. She didn’t know how far she had gone when her legs cramped up, she could barely breathe, and suddenly she just couldn’t run anymore. Her knees buckled, and she sank to the ground, her body shaking with sobs.
What’s wrong with me?
“Nothing, nothing’s wrong with me,” she whispered, barely able to catch her breath.
She pressed her hands against her thighs and rocked back on her heels, glancing around to get her bearings. She didn’t have any idea where she was. Nothing looked familiar. When had it gotten so dark?
She pushed to her feet and glanced up and down the street, panic clawing in her chest, making its way into her throat. She knew where she was—on that country road outside her parents’ home, and her father was behind her, pushing her up the sidewalk, toward the front door, which Raul opened with a sweeping gesture of his arm, as though their father were a king.
“No!” she shrieked, and tore away from all of it, running with her arms tucked in tightly at her sides, her breath exploding from her chest, terror whipping her forward faster. “Help me!” she shrieked. “Help me, he’s going to ...” And she tripped and pitched forward, and her arms shot out to break her fall. Someone ran over to her, a woman in jeans and a sweater. “Hey, are you okay? Should I call 911?”
“Are you real?” Jennifer asked. “You look real.” Curly brown hair, a cute face, a quick smile. “Please be real.”
“Yeah, I’m real.” She came over, touched Jennifer’s arm. “Listen, why don’t you just sit down right here.” She patted a section of wall behind her that marked the boundary of someone’s yard. “Tell me who to call. Husband? Boyfriend? Family? And what’s your name, anyway? I’m Annette. I live just down the block.”
Her name. What the hell was her name?
Where was her brutal father? Her sniveling brother? Her fiancé? No, no this was all mixed up. It was as if her brain had collapsed and was now rewiring itself a piece at a time, but the pieces didn’t fit. “I ... I ... don’t know my name.” She slumped to the wall, pressed her hands over her face, and wept.
She heard Annette on the phone, saying, “Yes, yes, that’s right. She’s melting down right here on the street.” Jennifer struggled to contain her sobs.
Humans don’t melt. Psyches do.
She burst into hysterical laughter and rocked back and forth, back and forth, her arms locked at her waist. When she couldn’t laugh anymore, when it hurt to laugh, she slapped the pocket in her running pants and brought out her cell phone. Stared at it. “What’s my name?”
“Your name is Jennifer Hart. People call you Jo. Close friends call you JoJo.”
“And who are you?”
“I’m Siri. And I—”
“You’re a piece of shit!” she screamed, and she hurled the
cell over her shoulder and into the yard behind her.
She heard sirens now, shrieks and squeals that sounded like a herd of wild animals. The air thundered with their approach. Jennifer grabbed onto the railing that sectioned off the yard, vaulted over it and ran until she was tackled from behind and struck the ground. “Alert Broward Mental Health,” said the man who now handcuffed her and pulled her to her feet. “We’ve got a wild one.”
Bet your ass. She slammed her knee into his groin, and he
grunted and fell back. But another man grabbed her around the waist, lifted her up as though she weighed nothing at all, and carried her to an ambulance. She screamed and struggled to free herself, but now she was on a bed, and another man restrained her ankles, then strapped something around her middle.
“Please,” she sobbed. “I didn’t do it.”
He sank a needle deep into her neck, and darkness seized her.
The House of Giral is an action-packed cerebral rollercoaster. Blending parapsychology, psychedelics and past lives, readers are in for a wild ride.
The story begins when Jungian psychologist Jennifer “Jo” Hart experiences a psychotic episode, landing her in a psychiatric unit overseen that night by Dr. Albert Young, a man with questionable practices. Triggered by a song first heard in another lifetime, Jo is sent on a journey to uncover hidden secrets from her past, a past filled with abuse and trauma. Meanwhile, the authorities discover the body of a woman, discarded and laid out in a cross-like pattern. The key connection is that the dead woman had formerly been Baker Acted and sent to the same unit as Jo. And she, too, had been subjected to Young’s Psychedelic treatment program. To solve the murder, and save Jo from a repetitive karmic pattern, Jo joins forces with others tangled in her past-life trauma. Memories triggered by songs, the diary of a young girl named Penny, and pure synchronicity will lead Jo down a dangerous path which could end with karmic retribution.
Author Mark Laurence Latowsky leads readers through an intriguing paranormal thriller that weaves medicine, psychology, and spiritual thought. Vibrant descriptions of modern-day Florida life and culture blended with frightening tales from old-world traditions of the 1920s remind us that if we don’t learn from our history, we may be doomed to repeat it. House of Giral is richly detailed with thought-provoking concepts around social issues, mental health, and how the universe operates. And, despite the sensitive subject matter tied to Penny’s story of sexual and physical abuse, Latowsky is careful to avoid being overly descriptive in those scenes, which empathic readers will appreciate.
As a reader, I would have loved to have seen more of the backstory of our characters in present day, allowing us to better understand how so many of them (Jo, Diego, Marina, Eleonore, Evan, etc.) seemed to have such detailed recollection of their interconnected past lives. This would have also helped me feel a deeper connection with our protagonist, her thoughts and motivations, and her emotional experience. It was easy to get inside the head of Dr. Young, a little less so with Jo and her supporters. Additionally, the narration felt a little incongruent at times, usually when the story bounced from the narrator’s neutral point of view to the emotionally driven characters, and back again. With that said, the story is unique and interesting.
If you are seeking a cerebral, mind-bending medical suspense thriller that will challenge what you think you know about how the world operates, the House of Giral is for you.