What do you think?
The Red Dress
The price of service to wealth and power is exposed when a father’s limits are tested on an ultrarich family’s remote island
Nick, in the wake of a failed marriage, settles for the relative ease of a well-paid job captaining a luxury yacht, but it leaves little time for his seven-year-old daughter Natalie. In a stroke of good fortune, he is offered a mysterious yet lucrative opportunity that allows Natalie to tag along, and they are soon flying across the globe in a private jet. The workload proves light and they are encouraged to enjoy the sun, surf, and island amenities—but they must wear customized digital glasses that shield the identities of his employers. When Natalie is invited to play with their children and her treasured red dress disappears, Nick discovers that everything is not as it seems, and what began as a grand adventure warps into an unsettling mirage.
An exploration of extreme privilege, global inequality, and the power of emerging technology, The Red Dress is also an eloquent story about our search for connection that raises essential questions about what we owe to ourselves and those we love.
Nick, in the wake of a failed marriage, settles for the relative ease of a well-paid job captaining a luxury yacht, but it leaves little time for his seven-year-old daughter Natalie. In a stroke of good fortune, he is offered a mysterious yet lucrative opportunity that allows Natalie to tag along, and they are soon flying across the globe in a private jet. The workload proves light and they are encouraged to enjoy the sun, surf, and island amenities—but they must wear customized digital glasses that shield the identities of his employers. When Natalie is invited to play with their children and her treasured red dress disappears, Nick discovers that everything is not as it seems, and what began as a grand adventure warps into an unsettling mirage.
An exploration of extreme privilege, global inequality, and the power of emerging technology, The Red Dress is also an eloquent story about our search for connection that raises essential questions about what we owe to ourselves and those we love.
224 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 6, 2026
About the author
Frank Huyler
9 books47 followersBorn 1964, in Berkeley, CA; married, 2000. Education: Williams College, B.A., 1986; University of North Carolina School of Medicine, M.D., M.P.H. Addresses: Home: Albuquerque, NM.
CAREER:
Emergency medicine physician, educator, and author. University of New Mexico Hospitals, Albuquerque, resident, 1993- 96; physician, 1996--; University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, assistant professor of emergency medicine.
CAREER:
Emergency medicine physician, educator, and author. University of New Mexico Hospitals, Albuquerque, resident, 1993- 96; physician, 1996--; University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, assistant professor of emergency medicine.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
“Alone, when the ocean is flat and silent and the sails hang limply from the masts, where the only sounds are the slap of water on the hull and the slow metronome of wires striking the masthead in the low swell, hour after hour, or day after day—this, after a while, becomes a state of mind, the place where both freedom and confinement converge on the map to the head of a pin.”
One of those novels I adore for its moody atmosphere, clean, confident prose, thought-provoking themes, and restless characters. Lots of interior thought that doesn’t just rely on stream of consciousness. Hard to pin down a genre, but it’s certainly speculative, with a sprinkle of social engineering at play. I was immediately enraptured by Nick, the main protagonist. He’s divorced with a seven-year-old daughter, Natalie. Nick lives as a ship’s captain on a fancy yacht, the Trieste , that is used for upscale dinners and parties, but hasn’t gone on any sailing adventures in years. This summer, through an old chef friend, he is offered an easy two-week job on a faraway island, captaining a sailboat for wealthy people and their guests. He can take Natalie with him and spend quality time with her, too. Nick and Natalie are offered a well-appointed cabin facing the ocean. All he knows about this place is that he’s in the Indian Ocean.
Weirdness begins in the contract. Where they are flying to is not divulged to Nick or the other staff flying in. Phones are to be relinquished during this period, and instead you are required to wear these tech glasses that alert you when the boss wants something, and blurs the faces of the owners and their guests. Why are those faces indistinct, I asked myself on and off throughout the narrative. At intervals, the story felt sinister—I kept waiting for something sudden to happen. Natalie is invited to the owners home a few times to play with his children—one of which has regular tantrums. That vaguely criminal air underpinned all the secrecy and futuristic high tech. Something does happen—it is given away in the book’s blurb, which I recommend not reading and rather reaching it organically. Repeatedly, the line of reality and fiction is distorted on this island, a kernel of the future foreshadowed. (It's already happening in our real world with technology creating fiction and calling it reality).
There are universal themes of family, the desperate search for connection, the aloneness (and sometimes loneliness) that Nick’s profession provides. There are upsides and downsides—one of which he doesn’t see his daughter often. She has a new and much younger stepfather now. For Nick, his life was always about adventure—getting far and away from his childhood home life as possible. After joining the merchant marines and learning his trade/profession, he continued to pursue this life of global travel—with the irony that going everywhere means also nowhere permanent at all. What Nick does during his off-time is reflect. A lot. He’s restive, uneasy, unsettled—he feels that he doesn’t know his daughter. How to turn that around?
In the meantime, his special glasses—the ones he is expected to wear any time outside his cabin—continue to ping intermittently, which often gave me the creeps. You want to see monkeys? The glasses will create monkeys in the trees in this tropical island, but even Natalie could tell the difference between these phony ones and the real McCoy. But in other cases, the glasses helped sharpen the world and allowed you to see at night.
I’m supposing that Frank Huyler, an ER doctor, knows how to sail. His descriptions were detailed without being dull or sounding like a Wiki page of how-to. Instead, it was folded into the meditative tone of the story and I often felt a part of it-- like a sheet of water, a slice of wind—anything that affects the actual navigation. Sometimes I was a keel, or the hull. I learned to sail a sunfish as a teenager and Huyler’s details took me back to those days—I was a novice and the wind sometimes got the better of me, and I’d accidentally jibe. Unlike Nick, who is a professional.
Plot is not your friend here, but the eerie sense of displacement, the perception of outside forces at play—the nerve-wracking subordination to the affluent and the profound apprehension that you are just a prole in a uniform up against the dominance of the wealthy and their whims—this is what encases the reader from beginning to end, and the more you turn the pages, the tighter it clenches. I held my breath at times and wondered when and if there would be mercy. Read to find out! This is my first Huyler novel and I definitely want to read more. He has that noir-tinged tone of a Lawrence Osborne narrative, the sense of dislocation and unraveling, the bemusement that comes with Westerners trying to comprehend colonized and exotic lands, and the enigmatic, unsentimental voice of someone who feels out of his depth but is reluctant to capitulate.
I recommend this for all lovers of literature, and are good with theme-based novels. Thank you to Bellevue Literary Press for sending me an ARC to read and review.
One of those novels I adore for its moody atmosphere, clean, confident prose, thought-provoking themes, and restless characters. Lots of interior thought that doesn’t just rely on stream of consciousness. Hard to pin down a genre, but it’s certainly speculative, with a sprinkle of social engineering at play. I was immediately enraptured by Nick, the main protagonist. He’s divorced with a seven-year-old daughter, Natalie. Nick lives as a ship’s captain on a fancy yacht, the Trieste , that is used for upscale dinners and parties, but hasn’t gone on any sailing adventures in years. This summer, through an old chef friend, he is offered an easy two-week job on a faraway island, captaining a sailboat for wealthy people and their guests. He can take Natalie with him and spend quality time with her, too. Nick and Natalie are offered a well-appointed cabin facing the ocean. All he knows about this place is that he’s in the Indian Ocean.
Weirdness begins in the contract. Where they are flying to is not divulged to Nick or the other staff flying in. Phones are to be relinquished during this period, and instead you are required to wear these tech glasses that alert you when the boss wants something, and blurs the faces of the owners and their guests. Why are those faces indistinct, I asked myself on and off throughout the narrative. At intervals, the story felt sinister—I kept waiting for something sudden to happen. Natalie is invited to the owners home a few times to play with his children—one of which has regular tantrums. That vaguely criminal air underpinned all the secrecy and futuristic high tech. Something does happen—it is given away in the book’s blurb, which I recommend not reading and rather reaching it organically. Repeatedly, the line of reality and fiction is distorted on this island, a kernel of the future foreshadowed. (It's already happening in our real world with technology creating fiction and calling it reality).
There are universal themes of family, the desperate search for connection, the aloneness (and sometimes loneliness) that Nick’s profession provides. There are upsides and downsides—one of which he doesn’t see his daughter often. She has a new and much younger stepfather now. For Nick, his life was always about adventure—getting far and away from his childhood home life as possible. After joining the merchant marines and learning his trade/profession, he continued to pursue this life of global travel—with the irony that going everywhere means also nowhere permanent at all. What Nick does during his off-time is reflect. A lot. He’s restive, uneasy, unsettled—he feels that he doesn’t know his daughter. How to turn that around?
In the meantime, his special glasses—the ones he is expected to wear any time outside his cabin—continue to ping intermittently, which often gave me the creeps. You want to see monkeys? The glasses will create monkeys in the trees in this tropical island, but even Natalie could tell the difference between these phony ones and the real McCoy. But in other cases, the glasses helped sharpen the world and allowed you to see at night.
I’m supposing that Frank Huyler, an ER doctor, knows how to sail. His descriptions were detailed without being dull or sounding like a Wiki page of how-to. Instead, it was folded into the meditative tone of the story and I often felt a part of it-- like a sheet of water, a slice of wind—anything that affects the actual navigation. Sometimes I was a keel, or the hull. I learned to sail a sunfish as a teenager and Huyler’s details took me back to those days—I was a novice and the wind sometimes got the better of me, and I’d accidentally jibe. Unlike Nick, who is a professional.
Plot is not your friend here, but the eerie sense of displacement, the perception of outside forces at play—the nerve-wracking subordination to the affluent and the profound apprehension that you are just a prole in a uniform up against the dominance of the wealthy and their whims—this is what encases the reader from beginning to end, and the more you turn the pages, the tighter it clenches. I held my breath at times and wondered when and if there would be mercy. Read to find out! This is my first Huyler novel and I definitely want to read more. He has that noir-tinged tone of a Lawrence Osborne narrative, the sense of dislocation and unraveling, the bemusement that comes with Westerners trying to comprehend colonized and exotic lands, and the enigmatic, unsentimental voice of someone who feels out of his depth but is reluctant to capitulate.
I recommend this for all lovers of literature, and are good with theme-based novels. Thank you to Bellevue Literary Press for sending me an ARC to read and review.
Review of advance copy
Watching a father try to connect with and do right by a young daughter in an uncanny world (that accentuates his awareness of his own aging) was achingly beautiful.
(I preordered from my local bookstore in ABQ and my copy arrived in the mail last week)
(I preordered from my local bookstore in ABQ and my copy arrived in the mail last week)
October 5, 2026
Can fixing what’s broken inside us spread to fixing what’s broken greater than us? A soulful and surreal parable for our disconnected times. (Unnamed island in the Indian Ocean; near-future): Why do stories set around the sea awaken our senses and stir our sensibilities?
Frank Huyler makes us feel he’s been around the ocean his whole life. Maybe he carves out time for yachting – since his character Nick, the narrator, instinctively understands, “Navigation is mathematics and order and time – when he’s not treating emergencies at a hospital in one of America’s landlocked states, New Mexico; and not immersed in dreaming up literary ideas for his novels. The Red Dress, his third.
In spare, richly composed prose (230 pages), it packs-a-punch. After reading this spellbinding, mysterious, and provocative story that shifts between the poignantly real and personal to the hyper-unreal and impersonal, I’d go anywhere Huyler wants to steer us.
In this case, to an unspecified, remote island in the Indian Ocean where a not-so-young father, Nick, jumps at the chance to take two weeks off from his job captaining a luxurious yacht in the Mediterranean – “designed with the elegance of history in mind,” named after a legendary “bathyscaphe” that reached the deepest level of the Western Pacific Ocean in 1960 known as the “Challenger Deep of the Mariana Trench,” the Trieste – to spend time getting to know his seven-year-old daughter, Natalie.
Lured by his love of the sea, exorbitant compensation for a too-good-to-be-true two-week sailing gig, the caveat and only requirement Nick asked for is to bring Natalie along. Why hasn’t he spent much, if any time, getting to know her since she was eighteen months old?
One of the many questions we surmise from the little information we’re given. Compared to the historical details of the Trieste provided and two other ocean expeditions in the 1800s, you can’t help but think Huyler intentionally leaves things out. It’s effective.
A nimble writer, he knows where he’s going, dropping details when he wants to, shifting lyrical, poetic, to cryptic at other times.
Like a painting, the novel evokes impressions and speculations not certainties.
By first engaging us with a realistic and poignant father-daughter bonding adventure that raises heart-churning questions about the impact of divorce on children, on fatherhood rather than motherhood, he readies us to think bigger picture, where nothing can be certain given the pace and challenges faced.
Not that Nick and Natalie’s situation is easy to fix, we can wrap our heads around it. Why, for instance, have Nick’s visitation rights been so harshly restricted to twelve days a year? Was his ex-wife Christina afraid of his dare-devil, sea venturing nature? If so, why agree to let Nick take Natalie with him to an unknown place at sea? Why does Natalie arrive feeling too well behaved, as if she’s learned she must be a very good girl to not cause any trouble at home?
There’s a scene, fleeting yet unforgettable, in which Nick goes through one of the “greatest moment of tenderness I had experienced in years.” The incident occurred in an unlikely private space, the bathroom in the deluxe cabin he and Natalie are staying in with glorious views of the beach and ocean. Where Natalie collapsed on the floor sobbing having been disturbingly treated related to the “red dress” of the title.
Nick breaks our hearts again admitting, “I didn’t know what to do.” He “did not know how to comfort” his own daughter.
Suspenseful and mystifying as the fictionalized emergency Huyler through Nick is treating is a race against time. Is it too late for him to make meaningful inroads in fostering a relationship with Natalie?
Like a skilled diagnostician, Nick listens, observes, and briefly notes symptoms – loneliness a primary one – affected by single parenting.
On the other end of the spectrum, the sensationalized, artificial one, The Red Dress reads like a perplexing experiment. When he signed on, unbeknownst to Nick, he’d be entering a virtual reality (VR) world where he must wear futuristic, high-tech digital eyeglasses wherever he goes on the island. They block out everything real. Nothing seems the way it is. Taking the glasses off means you must leave the island.
Why is everything top secret? Who is the extremely wealthy, overindulgent, excessively privileged “client” behind the scenes orchestrating this outlandish, risky game? Wouldn’t you think the big secret to protect isn’t the man with the money to throw around, but protecting proprietary innovation in a highly cutthroat industry?
Even Claude, a long lost admirer of Nick’s “professionalism” from his early sailing days – the middleman – has been kept in the dark about the man pulling all the strings, his “client.” Lured by money too, to advance his future. Claude, though, hasn’t fully gone over to the other side. He’s not anonymous, admits he hasn’t been truthful with Nick, and shows his humanity.
While we don’t have much to go on about Claude either, we’re told that he like Nick was raised without a father. We’re not entirely sure Nick is sold on him or why they lost touch, but he responds to Claude’s kindnesses towards Natalie. He’s the one who gave Natalie the red dress when they arrived on the island. A dress that made her feel like a princess.
The red dress takes on deeper meaning when Nick agrees, despite his reservations, to let Natalie play with the client’s two young girls at their grand house overlooking the ocean at the tip of the island. He relents to the invitation (how could he deny her wishes?) as long as an adult watches over the girls. A compassionate housekeeper who speaks Spanish, the language Natalie speaks (Nick and Claude too), allays his fears but not for long. It’s reassuring to see how Nick’s parenting instincts kick right in. Insightfully, he fiercely senses something is not right inside the main house.
When he steps in to intervene, his emotions become intensified and sharpened about how the world of super-wealth operates.
The injustices in our daily lives are only one piece of the puzzle. What about hiding from, denying the “colonial history” of the islanders? There’s a dark reference to it. What’s lost when money and power are the only things that drive us? Is too late to stop the fever of AI? What does it mean when we’ve succumbed to digital connections at the expense of everything human we’ve held dear? What really connects us to one another?
By raising serious questions about the state of our humanity, the novel serves as a moral lesson on the dangers of overwhelming our senses to the point that we can no longer distinguish what’s real from what’s unreal.
One thing is certain. The physician-novelist is keenly tuned in to what’s ailing us. That we need to be more sharply aware of what we’re losing. That we cannot ignore what’s happening around us. That we can prepare for ways around the limitations.
“It’s only when you leave the sea that the truth of the world begins to reassert itself again.”
Frank Huyler makes us feel he’s been around the ocean his whole life. Maybe he carves out time for yachting – since his character Nick, the narrator, instinctively understands, “Navigation is mathematics and order and time – when he’s not treating emergencies at a hospital in one of America’s landlocked states, New Mexico; and not immersed in dreaming up literary ideas for his novels. The Red Dress, his third.
In spare, richly composed prose (230 pages), it packs-a-punch. After reading this spellbinding, mysterious, and provocative story that shifts between the poignantly real and personal to the hyper-unreal and impersonal, I’d go anywhere Huyler wants to steer us.
In this case, to an unspecified, remote island in the Indian Ocean where a not-so-young father, Nick, jumps at the chance to take two weeks off from his job captaining a luxurious yacht in the Mediterranean – “designed with the elegance of history in mind,” named after a legendary “bathyscaphe” that reached the deepest level of the Western Pacific Ocean in 1960 known as the “Challenger Deep of the Mariana Trench,” the Trieste – to spend time getting to know his seven-year-old daughter, Natalie.
Lured by his love of the sea, exorbitant compensation for a too-good-to-be-true two-week sailing gig, the caveat and only requirement Nick asked for is to bring Natalie along. Why hasn’t he spent much, if any time, getting to know her since she was eighteen months old?
One of the many questions we surmise from the little information we’re given. Compared to the historical details of the Trieste provided and two other ocean expeditions in the 1800s, you can’t help but think Huyler intentionally leaves things out. It’s effective.
A nimble writer, he knows where he’s going, dropping details when he wants to, shifting lyrical, poetic, to cryptic at other times.
Like a painting, the novel evokes impressions and speculations not certainties.
By first engaging us with a realistic and poignant father-daughter bonding adventure that raises heart-churning questions about the impact of divorce on children, on fatherhood rather than motherhood, he readies us to think bigger picture, where nothing can be certain given the pace and challenges faced.
Not that Nick and Natalie’s situation is easy to fix, we can wrap our heads around it. Why, for instance, have Nick’s visitation rights been so harshly restricted to twelve days a year? Was his ex-wife Christina afraid of his dare-devil, sea venturing nature? If so, why agree to let Nick take Natalie with him to an unknown place at sea? Why does Natalie arrive feeling too well behaved, as if she’s learned she must be a very good girl to not cause any trouble at home?
There’s a scene, fleeting yet unforgettable, in which Nick goes through one of the “greatest moment of tenderness I had experienced in years.” The incident occurred in an unlikely private space, the bathroom in the deluxe cabin he and Natalie are staying in with glorious views of the beach and ocean. Where Natalie collapsed on the floor sobbing having been disturbingly treated related to the “red dress” of the title.
Nick breaks our hearts again admitting, “I didn’t know what to do.” He “did not know how to comfort” his own daughter.
Suspenseful and mystifying as the fictionalized emergency Huyler through Nick is treating is a race against time. Is it too late for him to make meaningful inroads in fostering a relationship with Natalie?
Like a skilled diagnostician, Nick listens, observes, and briefly notes symptoms – loneliness a primary one – affected by single parenting.
On the other end of the spectrum, the sensationalized, artificial one, The Red Dress reads like a perplexing experiment. When he signed on, unbeknownst to Nick, he’d be entering a virtual reality (VR) world where he must wear futuristic, high-tech digital eyeglasses wherever he goes on the island. They block out everything real. Nothing seems the way it is. Taking the glasses off means you must leave the island.
Why is everything top secret? Who is the extremely wealthy, overindulgent, excessively privileged “client” behind the scenes orchestrating this outlandish, risky game? Wouldn’t you think the big secret to protect isn’t the man with the money to throw around, but protecting proprietary innovation in a highly cutthroat industry?
Even Claude, a long lost admirer of Nick’s “professionalism” from his early sailing days – the middleman – has been kept in the dark about the man pulling all the strings, his “client.” Lured by money too, to advance his future. Claude, though, hasn’t fully gone over to the other side. He’s not anonymous, admits he hasn’t been truthful with Nick, and shows his humanity.
While we don’t have much to go on about Claude either, we’re told that he like Nick was raised without a father. We’re not entirely sure Nick is sold on him or why they lost touch, but he responds to Claude’s kindnesses towards Natalie. He’s the one who gave Natalie the red dress when they arrived on the island. A dress that made her feel like a princess.
The red dress takes on deeper meaning when Nick agrees, despite his reservations, to let Natalie play with the client’s two young girls at their grand house overlooking the ocean at the tip of the island. He relents to the invitation (how could he deny her wishes?) as long as an adult watches over the girls. A compassionate housekeeper who speaks Spanish, the language Natalie speaks (Nick and Claude too), allays his fears but not for long. It’s reassuring to see how Nick’s parenting instincts kick right in. Insightfully, he fiercely senses something is not right inside the main house.
When he steps in to intervene, his emotions become intensified and sharpened about how the world of super-wealth operates.
The injustices in our daily lives are only one piece of the puzzle. What about hiding from, denying the “colonial history” of the islanders? There’s a dark reference to it. What’s lost when money and power are the only things that drive us? Is too late to stop the fever of AI? What does it mean when we’ve succumbed to digital connections at the expense of everything human we’ve held dear? What really connects us to one another?
By raising serious questions about the state of our humanity, the novel serves as a moral lesson on the dangers of overwhelming our senses to the point that we can no longer distinguish what’s real from what’s unreal.
One thing is certain. The physician-novelist is keenly tuned in to what’s ailing us. That we need to be more sharply aware of what we’re losing. That we cannot ignore what’s happening around us. That we can prepare for ways around the limitations.
“It’s only when you leave the sea that the truth of the world begins to reassert itself again.”
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
“The Red Dress” by Frank Heyler swept me away to a beautifully private island, mysterious and foreboding. While I was there, I was also inside the mind of Nick, our first-person narrator, as he begins to examine his life, our times, and his future.
Approaching middle age, Nick is a successful yacht captain who presides over a luxurious party boat. He does not own the yacht, but he handles all the details of its cruises including hosting. He is both a captain and a servant of his guests.
An opportunity comes to him by way of a former acquaintance, Claude, whom Nick helped out early in Claude’s career.
Claude has been hired by an anonymous tech billionaire to oversee a family vacation on a private and very remote island; he offers Nick the lucrative position of captaining the billionaire’s state-of-the-art sailboat. Nick hesitates because the timing is during the two weeks that he has visitation with his seven-year-old daughter, Natalie. Claude assures him that Natalie may come along with him; the billionaire has two young daughters slightly older than she. It will be a vacation for them both, as Nick will hardly be taxed with more than taking the billionaire and/or his friends out on occasional boat rides.
When Nick and Natalie arrive, along with the other workers (servants) Claude has hired, they are required to relinquish their cell phones (and their privacy) and none of them are ever to know the identity of the billionaire.
I don’t want to describe more of the plot because Huyler skillfully paces Nick’s narrative to reveal each detail and incident that occurs, with the mounting dread of what’s to come.
The extravagant world of the super-rich and powerful, and the high tech of the future that is sure to challenge our ability to trust our own senses, opens Nick’s eyes to his own life, and what he desires for his future, particularly when it comes to Natalie.
Huyler’s novel is thrilling, thought-provoking, thoroughly engrossing, and impossible to put down as the reader feels tensions intensify. What will Nick do for Natalie? How will he stand up to immense power that is not bothered by consequences?
Many thanks once again to Bellevue Literary Press for yet another wonderful and utterly unique read!
Approaching middle age, Nick is a successful yacht captain who presides over a luxurious party boat. He does not own the yacht, but he handles all the details of its cruises including hosting. He is both a captain and a servant of his guests.
An opportunity comes to him by way of a former acquaintance, Claude, whom Nick helped out early in Claude’s career.
Claude has been hired by an anonymous tech billionaire to oversee a family vacation on a private and very remote island; he offers Nick the lucrative position of captaining the billionaire’s state-of-the-art sailboat. Nick hesitates because the timing is during the two weeks that he has visitation with his seven-year-old daughter, Natalie. Claude assures him that Natalie may come along with him; the billionaire has two young daughters slightly older than she. It will be a vacation for them both, as Nick will hardly be taxed with more than taking the billionaire and/or his friends out on occasional boat rides.
When Nick and Natalie arrive, along with the other workers (servants) Claude has hired, they are required to relinquish their cell phones (and their privacy) and none of them are ever to know the identity of the billionaire.
I don’t want to describe more of the plot because Huyler skillfully paces Nick’s narrative to reveal each detail and incident that occurs, with the mounting dread of what’s to come.
The extravagant world of the super-rich and powerful, and the high tech of the future that is sure to challenge our ability to trust our own senses, opens Nick’s eyes to his own life, and what he desires for his future, particularly when it comes to Natalie.
Huyler’s novel is thrilling, thought-provoking, thoroughly engrossing, and impossible to put down as the reader feels tensions intensify. What will Nick do for Natalie? How will he stand up to immense power that is not bothered by consequences?
Many thanks once again to Bellevue Literary Press for yet another wonderful and utterly unique read!
Review of advance copy received from Publishers Weekly
We live in extraordinary and unsettling times when the thin line between truth and fiction is increasingly blurred, when the stratospherically wealthy and powerful follow their own obscene rules, and when the acceleration of technology tears away at what makes us human.
Into that world steps Frank Huyler – an author I have not read before – with a simple reminder: sometimes what is of most value in life is imagination…the belief that a red dress can turn a little girl into a princess.
The Red Dress is a mesmerizing book by a master novelist, so good that I devoured it in just two days. The premise: Nick, a divorced father of a seven-year-old girl named Natalie, is approached by a former colleague with an enticing offer. He will be handsomely rewarded for captaining a luxury sailboat in an exotic location for an extremely privileged individual and his guests, and he can even bring his young daughter along. There is only one catch: he must wear technologically advanced digital glasses that blur the identity of the employer and guests during his idyllic time in paradise.
Indeed, the employer keeps his word. Nick’s duties are light, there is an abundance of everything he could want, the island is as close to paradise as it gets. But the glasses speak to the inevitabilities that soon enough, nothing will be believed, and nothing will be seen clearly. There will only be distortions, and those distortions will further separate the haves and the have-nots. As new powers are released into the world, our very humanity is at stake.
When Natalie’s red dress – given to her when she first arrives at the island, which grants her magical powers of her own (the kind that reside in a child’s imagination) that she is a princess -- goes missing, Nick must face a moral awakening. What does it mean to break free and to do what feels right and good? I received an advance copy of this propulsive novel by one of my favorite small presses, Bellevue Literary Press, in exchange for an honest review, and I recommend The Red Dress without reservation.
Into that world steps Frank Huyler – an author I have not read before – with a simple reminder: sometimes what is of most value in life is imagination…the belief that a red dress can turn a little girl into a princess.
The Red Dress is a mesmerizing book by a master novelist, so good that I devoured it in just two days. The premise: Nick, a divorced father of a seven-year-old girl named Natalie, is approached by a former colleague with an enticing offer. He will be handsomely rewarded for captaining a luxury sailboat in an exotic location for an extremely privileged individual and his guests, and he can even bring his young daughter along. There is only one catch: he must wear technologically advanced digital glasses that blur the identity of the employer and guests during his idyllic time in paradise.
Indeed, the employer keeps his word. Nick’s duties are light, there is an abundance of everything he could want, the island is as close to paradise as it gets. But the glasses speak to the inevitabilities that soon enough, nothing will be believed, and nothing will be seen clearly. There will only be distortions, and those distortions will further separate the haves and the have-nots. As new powers are released into the world, our very humanity is at stake.
When Natalie’s red dress – given to her when she first arrives at the island, which grants her magical powers of her own (the kind that reside in a child’s imagination) that she is a princess -- goes missing, Nick must face a moral awakening. What does it mean to break free and to do what feels right and good? I received an advance copy of this propulsive novel by one of my favorite small presses, Bellevue Literary Press, in exchange for an honest review, and I recommend The Red Dress without reservation.
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
Nick is the captain (not owner) of a luxury yacht. It sounds like a sexy job but mainly involves shuttling around rich corporate types for a night of drinking and dancing before returning to the marina and sleeping in modest quarters. Claude, an old friend of Nick’s, offers him an intentionally vague ten day 'captaining' gig which pays extraordinarily well but overlaps with the brief period in summer that Nick spends with his seven-year-old daughter, Natalie. Claude encourages Nick to bring his daughter and turn the job into a bonding adventure.
Nick arrives on an anonymous island with Natalie, and observes all the staff and crew are clean-cut white twenty and thirty-somethings without tattoos. Cell phones are turned in, and high-tech Google Glass-like devices that identify crew members by name and allow for synchronized communication are distributed. The glasses possess other capabilities and create a Big-Brother type feeling throughout the story. Nick takes Natalie swimming and the power of the ocean’s undercurrent is highlighted early, giving the reader a sense of an ominous encounter.
The first-person narrative, from the perspective of Nick, is told with thoughtful, poignant, delicately crafted prose. Short simple lines like, “Borrowed luxury is never complete. You never are fully at ease,” build a mysterious atmosphere. Well-done scenes progress, but Nick (and in turn the reader) only ever understand portions of what is happening. The level of the island's malevolence can be decided by the reader, but a significant crisis in The Red Dress is Nick’s realization that his relationship with his daughter is weak, and his own mild, boring life, is totally dictated by the rules of others.
This is a slower paced novel not overloaded with action but contains smoothly haunting high-tech elements and is hard to put down. Recommended to fans of literary fiction. Thanks to Edelweiss+ and Bellevue Literary Press for a review copy.
Nick arrives on an anonymous island with Natalie, and observes all the staff and crew are clean-cut white twenty and thirty-somethings without tattoos. Cell phones are turned in, and high-tech Google Glass-like devices that identify crew members by name and allow for synchronized communication are distributed. The glasses possess other capabilities and create a Big-Brother type feeling throughout the story. Nick takes Natalie swimming and the power of the ocean’s undercurrent is highlighted early, giving the reader a sense of an ominous encounter.
The first-person narrative, from the perspective of Nick, is told with thoughtful, poignant, delicately crafted prose. Short simple lines like, “Borrowed luxury is never complete. You never are fully at ease,” build a mysterious atmosphere. Well-done scenes progress, but Nick (and in turn the reader) only ever understand portions of what is happening. The level of the island's malevolence can be decided by the reader, but a significant crisis in The Red Dress is Nick’s realization that his relationship with his daughter is weak, and his own mild, boring life, is totally dictated by the rules of others.
This is a slower paced novel not overloaded with action but contains smoothly haunting high-tech elements and is hard to put down. Recommended to fans of literary fiction. Thanks to Edelweiss+ and Bellevue Literary Press for a review copy.
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
I originally passed this ARC up on Edelweiss as it just didn’t feel like my kind of book . Sounded a little eerie . But after I read Betsy’s review, I was convinced that this was an important book. I can’t say I enjoyed reading it, and I was right on both counts. It’s not my kind of book - too tense , almost thriller like and pretty eerie. Yet, there was so much to appreciate here. The writing is impeccable. A relatively short book, reflecting on so much that is relevant- the impact of technology, the very rich who have the capability of controlling other people’s lives. It’s also a moving story of a man deciding who he is and what his daughter means to him .
Nick is a sailboat captain for a boat that doesn’t really sail anymore but serves as a venue for private parties. He’s offered a job as a sailboat captain for a an ultra rich client on a private island for 2 weeks. He takes the job only if he can bring his 7 year old daughter Natalie with him . Nick only sees her once a year for two weeks and this is the two weeks. They arrive at the island in a location other than where Nick was told, beginning the clandestine experience. All of the employees must wear special glasses which blur the faces of the employer, his family and their guests blurring reality in other ways and serving as tracking mechanisms.
I was on pins and needles waiting for something awful to happen. Again, this anxiety is not something I relish when reading. What happens during this short time to Nick and Natalie is a rude awakening for Nick and for the reader. A worthy read . The descriptions of the island and the sea took me there.
Check out Betsy’s review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I received a copy of this book from Bellevue Press through Edelweiss.
Nick is a sailboat captain for a boat that doesn’t really sail anymore but serves as a venue for private parties. He’s offered a job as a sailboat captain for a an ultra rich client on a private island for 2 weeks. He takes the job only if he can bring his 7 year old daughter Natalie with him . Nick only sees her once a year for two weeks and this is the two weeks. They arrive at the island in a location other than where Nick was told, beginning the clandestine experience. All of the employees must wear special glasses which blur the faces of the employer, his family and their guests blurring reality in other ways and serving as tracking mechanisms.
I was on pins and needles waiting for something awful to happen. Again, this anxiety is not something I relish when reading. What happens during this short time to Nick and Natalie is a rude awakening for Nick and for the reader. A worthy read . The descriptions of the island and the sea took me there.
Check out Betsy’s review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I received a copy of this book from Bellevue Press through Edelweiss.
October 5, 2026
This is another amazing work by Dr Huyler. Barnes & Noble sent me a copy early. I wait for his writing. I will probably buy multiple copies of this book for gifts during Christmas.
This is a fantastic adventure story about a man and his daughter finding their way together on an island. Lots of additional themes and allegories mix together and I’m sure this book will be with me for some time. It addresses wealth and privilege, the service culture, marriage and divorce, and how we carry our parents (in this case his mother) with us long after they die.
This is a fantastic adventure story about a man and his daughter finding their way together on an island. Lots of additional themes and allegories mix together and I’m sure this book will be with me for some time. It addresses wealth and privilege, the service culture, marriage and divorce, and how we carry our parents (in this case his mother) with us long after they die.
October 2, 2026
We live in a world that has become strange and foreboding. Forces that we don't fully understand are moving events in directions that seem ominous and dangerous. The media re replete with analyses and recommendations, but few seem to have traction. Then a book like The Red Dress comes along and distills these feelings into a quiet yet dramatic meditation on the meaning of superwealth, power, hierarchy, and the meaning of love. I won't say anymore. This book says it all.
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
This is a work of art. In some ways this is the simple mesmerizing story of a ship’s captain, formerly the captain of a party ship called Trieste, who brings to a gig on a private island his little daughter who he rarely sees in his divorce agreement. But it is told with the power and undertow of the ocean that surrounds the island and the man. This is a story about freedom—giving it up without realizing it, and winning it back.
The Red Dress is literary perfection. I would put it on my bookshelf next to Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and the fairly unknown masterpiece Cove by Cynan Jones, and somewhat adjacent to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. None of these books are remotely alike except they are powered by the oceans of life with all their waves, riptides, and undertow, as interpreted by a great artist. I’ve never surfed, but I imagine catching a great wave might feel something like the end of this book.
Longer essay on Substack.
The Red Dress is literary perfection. I would put it on my bookshelf next to Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and the fairly unknown masterpiece Cove by Cynan Jones, and somewhat adjacent to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. None of these books are remotely alike except they are powered by the oceans of life with all their waves, riptides, and undertow, as interpreted by a great artist. I’ve never surfed, but I imagine catching a great wave might feel something like the end of this book.
Longer essay on Substack.
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