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Return to Sandara by Rubinstein, Mark (2014) Paperback
When Gabriel, a twenty-year-old college student, arranges to meet his older brother, Luke, in the quaint village of Sandara on Spain’s Costa Brava, he expects a fun-filled summer. But Gabriel and Luke encounter corruption and evil. Crucial choices must be made, which resonate powerfully in this tale of love, doubt, envy, and chance. And Gabriel must grapple with the darkness hidden deeply in his own heart.
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First published October 17, 2014
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About the author
Mark Rubinstein
35 books819 followersMark Rubinstein graduated from NYU with a degree in business. He then served in the army as a field medic tending to paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division. After discharge, he re-entered NYU as a premed student.
As a medical student at the State University of New York, he developed an interest in psychiatry, discovering in that specialty the same thing he realized in reading fiction: every patient has a compelling story to tell. He became a board-certified psychiatrist.
In addition to his private practice he became a forensic psychiatrist because of the drama and conflict in the courtroom. He also taught psychiatric residents, interns, psychologists, and social workers at New York Presbyterian Hospital, and became a clinical assistant professor at Cornell University’s medical school.
He is a contributor to Psychology Today and The Huffington Post.
Before turning to fiction, Rubinstein coauthored five medical self-help books: The First Encounter: The Beginnings in Psychotherapy (Jason Aronson); The Complete Book of Cosmetic Facial Surgery (Simon and Schuster); New Choices: the Latest Options in Treating Breast Cancer (Dodd Mead); Heartplan: A Complete Program for Total Fitness of Heart & Mind (McGraw-Hill), and The Growing Years: A Guide to Your Child’s Emotional Development from Birth to Adolescence (Atheneum).
Rubinstein's high-octane thriller Mad Dog House was a finalist for the 2012 ForeWord Book Of The Year Award for suspense/thrillers. His 2nd thriller, Love Gone Mad, was published in September 2013 and his novella, The Foot Soldier (November 2013) won the Silver award in the 2014 Benjamin Franklin Awards competition, in the Popular Fiction category. His novel Mad Dog Justice (September 2014), tagged as a "pulse-pounding tale of post-modern paranoia," is a finalist for the 2014 ForeWord Book of the Year Award. His novella, Return to Sandara, won the Gold Medal for suspense/thrillers in the 2015 IPPY Awards. The Lovers' Tango, is a medical and legal thriller about which Michael Connelly said, "The tension on these pages never lets you go. Rubinstein is a born storyteller." The Lovers' Tango has won the Gold Award in Popular Fiction for this year's 2016 IPPA Benjamin Franklin Award.
Bedlam's Door: True Tales of Madness and Hope, was published in September 2016. Beyond Bedlam's Door: True Tales from the Couch and Courtroom was published on May 15, 2017.
Rubinstein's book MAD DOG VENGEANCE, the 3rd in the Mad Dog Series, was published on October 15, 2017.
Rubinstein has since written Assassin's Lullaby and A Lethal Question.
As a medical student at the State University of New York, he developed an interest in psychiatry, discovering in that specialty the same thing he realized in reading fiction: every patient has a compelling story to tell. He became a board-certified psychiatrist.
In addition to his private practice he became a forensic psychiatrist because of the drama and conflict in the courtroom. He also taught psychiatric residents, interns, psychologists, and social workers at New York Presbyterian Hospital, and became a clinical assistant professor at Cornell University’s medical school.
He is a contributor to Psychology Today and The Huffington Post.
Before turning to fiction, Rubinstein coauthored five medical self-help books: The First Encounter: The Beginnings in Psychotherapy (Jason Aronson); The Complete Book of Cosmetic Facial Surgery (Simon and Schuster); New Choices: the Latest Options in Treating Breast Cancer (Dodd Mead); Heartplan: A Complete Program for Total Fitness of Heart & Mind (McGraw-Hill), and The Growing Years: A Guide to Your Child’s Emotional Development from Birth to Adolescence (Atheneum).
Rubinstein's high-octane thriller Mad Dog House was a finalist for the 2012 ForeWord Book Of The Year Award for suspense/thrillers. His 2nd thriller, Love Gone Mad, was published in September 2013 and his novella, The Foot Soldier (November 2013) won the Silver award in the 2014 Benjamin Franklin Awards competition, in the Popular Fiction category. His novel Mad Dog Justice (September 2014), tagged as a "pulse-pounding tale of post-modern paranoia," is a finalist for the 2014 ForeWord Book of the Year Award. His novella, Return to Sandara, won the Gold Medal for suspense/thrillers in the 2015 IPPY Awards. The Lovers' Tango, is a medical and legal thriller about which Michael Connelly said, "The tension on these pages never lets you go. Rubinstein is a born storyteller." The Lovers' Tango has won the Gold Award in Popular Fiction for this year's 2016 IPPA Benjamin Franklin Award.
Bedlam's Door: True Tales of Madness and Hope, was published in September 2016. Beyond Bedlam's Door: True Tales from the Couch and Courtroom was published on May 15, 2017.
Rubinstein's book MAD DOG VENGEANCE, the 3rd in the Mad Dog Series, was published on October 15, 2017.
Rubinstein has since written Assassin's Lullaby and A Lethal Question.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 10, 2015
When I read, I want to feel a range of emotions; excitement, misery, and all that's in between. I want to breathe the characters' air and see the world through their eyes. I want to forget the time and the bills I have to pay.
Admittedly, this is a lot to ask of words on a page. Yet Mark Rubinstein meets this challenge in a way that feels effortless. His writing has a literary flavor, using just the right word at just the right time. We aren't given lots of descriptive adverbs and adjectives. The writing is lighter, yet far more powerful because of this.
The story is about brotherly love and admiration. It's also about adventure and the kind of freedom reserved mainly for the youth, before responsibilities and experience keep us from crossing that line in the sand. We have suspense and drama, joy and sadness. Most importantly, we have depth. These characters made me care about their story. They made me think and feel. I will remember them. And that is the best gift any author can give.
Admittedly, this is a lot to ask of words on a page. Yet Mark Rubinstein meets this challenge in a way that feels effortless. His writing has a literary flavor, using just the right word at just the right time. We aren't given lots of descriptive adverbs and adjectives. The writing is lighter, yet far more powerful because of this.
The story is about brotherly love and admiration. It's also about adventure and the kind of freedom reserved mainly for the youth, before responsibilities and experience keep us from crossing that line in the sand. We have suspense and drama, joy and sadness. Most importantly, we have depth. These characters made me care about their story. They made me think and feel. I will remember them. And that is the best gift any author can give.
November 10, 2014
When I visited Spain for the first time in 1982, there were two things that alienated me: First of all there were still quite some coins (Pesetas) in circulation, which showed the portrait of General Franco, although his dictatorship has ended seven years before, when Franco died. And then there were the officials of the Guardia Civil, the paramilitary state police, who, with their weapons and uniforms, their whole demeanor and esprit de corps, appeared quite intimidating to me. Luckily I never had any real business with those people.
This, however, does not apply to the two protagonists of the story. Gabriel and Luke are brothers. While the younger one, Gabriel, is a conscientious College student, Luke has spent some time in Europe and his family (including Gabriel) doesn't really know what exactly he is doing there. The brothers decide to spend some vacation weeks together in the fictional town of Sandara, not far from Barcelona. Everything goes fine until they encounter some dubious guys on the beach, and later have to make an unpleasant acquaintance with the Guardia Civil. All this happens "forty years ago". So it must be about 1974, when Franco and his henchmen were still ruling the country in a dictatorial way.
For me the setting of the novella in Spain, which I visited a few more times after 1982, was especially appealing. The area around Barcelona, the rugged coast, the sea, the forests there, I actually know quite well. While reading I was reminded of some long forgotten, but pleasant things that happened there, not intended by the author, of course, but proving how authentic the novel is written. I mean the description of everything, not only what can be seen, but also the sounds, the smells, the tastes. It's not very difficult for an author to achieve this. Only a few words will do, you just have to pick the right ones. Also, the typical way the author advances the plot has convinced me once again.
If you like Spain, the Mediterranean Sea, and a gripping story, this novella is for you. ¡Que te diviertas!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
This, however, does not apply to the two protagonists of the story. Gabriel and Luke are brothers. While the younger one, Gabriel, is a conscientious College student, Luke has spent some time in Europe and his family (including Gabriel) doesn't really know what exactly he is doing there. The brothers decide to spend some vacation weeks together in the fictional town of Sandara, not far from Barcelona. Everything goes fine until they encounter some dubious guys on the beach, and later have to make an unpleasant acquaintance with the Guardia Civil. All this happens "forty years ago". So it must be about 1974, when Franco and his henchmen were still ruling the country in a dictatorial way.
For me the setting of the novella in Spain, which I visited a few more times after 1982, was especially appealing. The area around Barcelona, the rugged coast, the sea, the forests there, I actually know quite well. While reading I was reminded of some long forgotten, but pleasant things that happened there, not intended by the author, of course, but proving how authentic the novel is written. I mean the description of everything, not only what can be seen, but also the sounds, the smells, the tastes. It's not very difficult for an author to achieve this. Only a few words will do, you just have to pick the right ones. Also, the typical way the author advances the plot has convinced me once again.
If you like Spain, the Mediterranean Sea, and a gripping story, this novella is for you. ¡Que te diviertas!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
November 19, 2014
A boy who learns how to ride a bicycle at age 13 is shamefully late. People look at him in disbelief. At age 13 you know how much it's going to hurt when you crash it, so it's better to start early when you are blissfully ignorant of upcoming pain. But at age 13 you KNOW you've got to do it no-matter-what because it's time; it's way past the time. So you grab the handles, push on one of the pedals and feel the swish of destiny sucking you in. Here it goes, no matter what happens!
I hate you, Mark Rubinstein. I hate you for letting me read a "Return to Sandara" and making me take that final plunge into losing the last of my credibility as a budding critic; just like I took the plunge into learning how to ride that bicycle so late in life. I hate you almost as much as I love your novella.
I swear you must work with long lists of key words designed to step on people's nerves. How else could you keep up the tension, the suspense, the inner fears and the reader's hands taut around the book for the two hours the eyes try to skim words to see what's coming, but fail miserably, going constantly back to drink in the words he might have missed?
The story of two brothers; the dreaded nightmare that assaults the youngest as the plane descends into the Barcelona airport at Llobregat. The electric current that rakes what Gabe remembers of that fateful trip 40 years ago, that weaves thoughts into words, that painfully squeezes your soul's gonads and shakes you and bumps you for what seems like eons until you can't take any more tension. You need to know what happens; you fear the worst, but you still need to know.
Big brother Luke, the mysterious sibling who always appears in the nick of time and saves the day, handsome, with a golden voice and a honeyed charm that sweeps the girls off their feet like so much wheat being felled by a scythe. Luke: the reckless one. Gabe: the normal kid.
A great writer could build volumes of character around each one of them. Rubinstein does much better than that: he shows you one word that paints a thousand pictures! Did you know that music can bleed through a door? That floored me. Do you hear the scratch of rats' nails climbing the dank walls of a calaboose? Does the rotting cabbage of the garbage bin behind which Gabe hides stab your nostrils? Prepare to live it! Prepare to love it!
Who is this Rubinstein fellow, really? For goodness' sake, he's a psychiatrist. He should be writing prescriptions for the mentally ill with an appalling handwriting. Instead, here he is, showing us what literary talent is all about.
He does NOT spend hours sweating whether or not to use the Oxford comma, like the rest of us. Oh no! He's the kind of novelist who probably whips up six chapters before breakfast. What a sickening, enviable image to those of us who have to sweat each paragraph.
OK, Rubinstein, here goes my credibility. Foiled again in my quest to give you only four stars. Bravo for "Return to Sandara!" Five Stars, darn it, Five Stars!
And, by the way, I don't hate you.
I hate you, Mark Rubinstein. I hate you for letting me read a "Return to Sandara" and making me take that final plunge into losing the last of my credibility as a budding critic; just like I took the plunge into learning how to ride that bicycle so late in life. I hate you almost as much as I love your novella.
I swear you must work with long lists of key words designed to step on people's nerves. How else could you keep up the tension, the suspense, the inner fears and the reader's hands taut around the book for the two hours the eyes try to skim words to see what's coming, but fail miserably, going constantly back to drink in the words he might have missed?
The story of two brothers; the dreaded nightmare that assaults the youngest as the plane descends into the Barcelona airport at Llobregat. The electric current that rakes what Gabe remembers of that fateful trip 40 years ago, that weaves thoughts into words, that painfully squeezes your soul's gonads and shakes you and bumps you for what seems like eons until you can't take any more tension. You need to know what happens; you fear the worst, but you still need to know.
Big brother Luke, the mysterious sibling who always appears in the nick of time and saves the day, handsome, with a golden voice and a honeyed charm that sweeps the girls off their feet like so much wheat being felled by a scythe. Luke: the reckless one. Gabe: the normal kid.
A great writer could build volumes of character around each one of them. Rubinstein does much better than that: he shows you one word that paints a thousand pictures! Did you know that music can bleed through a door? That floored me. Do you hear the scratch of rats' nails climbing the dank walls of a calaboose? Does the rotting cabbage of the garbage bin behind which Gabe hides stab your nostrils? Prepare to live it! Prepare to love it!
Who is this Rubinstein fellow, really? For goodness' sake, he's a psychiatrist. He should be writing prescriptions for the mentally ill with an appalling handwriting. Instead, here he is, showing us what literary talent is all about.
He does NOT spend hours sweating whether or not to use the Oxford comma, like the rest of us. Oh no! He's the kind of novelist who probably whips up six chapters before breakfast. What a sickening, enviable image to those of us who have to sweat each paragraph.
OK, Rubinstein, here goes my credibility. Foiled again in my quest to give you only four stars. Bravo for "Return to Sandara!" Five Stars, darn it, Five Stars!
And, by the way, I don't hate you.
November 18, 2014
RETURN TO SANDARA MARK RUBENSTEIN
Years after a tragic event Gabriel is returning to the scene of the crime so to speak. His brother Lucas was a tad rebellious in his youth and to way too many risks that but both he and Gabriel and their friends in danger. Travelling through Spain the boys come up against Cartel goons and corrupt cops. What will happen? Read and find out because I am not spoiling this one.
Mr. Rubenstein is a master of penning a suspenseful ride, move over Mr. King. The genre of psychological suspense thriller has a new master. Five stars was given to this engrossing novella!
Years after a tragic event Gabriel is returning to the scene of the crime so to speak. His brother Lucas was a tad rebellious in his youth and to way too many risks that but both he and Gabriel and their friends in danger. Travelling through Spain the boys come up against Cartel goons and corrupt cops. What will happen? Read and find out because I am not spoiling this one.
Mr. Rubenstein is a master of penning a suspenseful ride, move over Mr. King. The genre of psychological suspense thriller has a new master. Five stars was given to this engrossing novella!
October 3, 2015
Fiction Sad Story
This is a talented author, able to convey so much atmosphere and suspense into such a short story. It's not really my cup of tea, but if you like crime drama, you will like this.
I had to come back and say that I disagree vehemently with the main character's conclusions, but the fact that I'm still thinking about it bumps this up another star.
This is a talented author, able to convey so much atmosphere and suspense into such a short story. It's not really my cup of tea, but if you like crime drama, you will like this.
I had to come back and say that I disagree vehemently with the main character's conclusions, but the fact that I'm still thinking about it bumps this up another star.
November 15, 2014
Outstanding read! So much packed into a small space. Gripping, kept my attention from start to finish. Had no idea how everything would end. Kept a great intensity all the way through. Highly recommend.
June 19, 2015
I loved this book. I wish it was longer!! It kept me intrigued the whole way.
August 19, 2018
Fantastic!
This book is such an enjoyable read! The setting in Spain added some allure, especially thinking of the Mediterranean coast. There are all sorts of phenomenal descriptions that seem to be the authors forte. I suppose the plot wasn’t all that unusually unique, but the writing was so good that you don’t analyze the plot. I was surprised to look down and see that I was 98% through the book. I knew there wasn’t time for a satisfying ending. But I’ll wash the sand off my feet and look forward to the next book.
This book is such an enjoyable read! The setting in Spain added some allure, especially thinking of the Mediterranean coast. There are all sorts of phenomenal descriptions that seem to be the authors forte. I suppose the plot wasn’t all that unusually unique, but the writing was so good that you don’t analyze the plot. I was surprised to look down and see that I was 98% through the book. I knew there wasn’t time for a satisfying ending. But I’ll wash the sand off my feet and look forward to the next book.
July 23, 2021
Best first line ever.... “I will go to my grave filled with remorse for what I did to my brother.”
Great story. Great characters. Great read.
Great story. Great characters. Great read.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews