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Gypsy
Tim Ritter is dying. Cancer, the Big C, was eating him alive and he only had a few months left to live. Or did he? When a gypsy at a country fair offers him a chance for a new, cancer-free life, he has to decide if he is going to live out the death sentence the doctors have handed him or if he is willing to give up the life he has lived to become her instrument of vengeance for a crime that had been committed fifty years in the past. Does he really have a choice? A chance at a new life versus a slow, painful death … Tim chooses life … and the consequences that come with it.
170 pages, Paperback
Published February 14, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 18, 2017
Review: GYPSY by Dan Foley
Gosh I love this book. It's compactly taut, requiring only a minimal suspension of disbelief. Starting with a carnival in Vermont in 1956 (a decent carnival, where the carnies demonstrate family feeling, not the horror show type often found in fiction), we the reader quickly discover that the carnie crew, and most of the townspeople are good guys. Unfortunately, the town does contain some bad apples--or rather, one monstrous (in both character and size, most unfortunately) and his personal cache of five acolytes, for whom he constantly plays his own version of Simon Says (or else). He is seemingly unstoppable; and not too stable. When he and his followers (not equal enough to be buddies) commit a horrid crime in July 1956, his own personal enabler, his brother the Sheriff, blows it away.
Fifty years later, a seventy-two-old man, a Vietnam vet, originally from New Jersey, happens into the carnival, mostly for distraction. With brain cancer, he only has three to four months to live--until he meets his destiny and finds his purpose, discovering himself returned to 1956. His hero's quest: to right a terrible wrong, to overturn a gross miscarriage of justice, and to wreak someone else's revenge. What a page-turner!
Gosh I love this book. It's compactly taut, requiring only a minimal suspension of disbelief. Starting with a carnival in Vermont in 1956 (a decent carnival, where the carnies demonstrate family feeling, not the horror show type often found in fiction), we the reader quickly discover that the carnie crew, and most of the townspeople are good guys. Unfortunately, the town does contain some bad apples--or rather, one monstrous (in both character and size, most unfortunately) and his personal cache of five acolytes, for whom he constantly plays his own version of Simon Says (or else). He is seemingly unstoppable; and not too stable. When he and his followers (not equal enough to be buddies) commit a horrid crime in July 1956, his own personal enabler, his brother the Sheriff, blows it away.
Fifty years later, a seventy-two-old man, a Vietnam vet, originally from New Jersey, happens into the carnival, mostly for distraction. With brain cancer, he only has three to four months to live--until he meets his destiny and finds his purpose, discovering himself returned to 1956. His hero's quest: to right a terrible wrong, to overturn a gross miscarriage of justice, and to wreak someone else's revenge. What a page-turner!
July 7, 2024
great story telling good wins
Great the hero is in charge and saves the girl the guys got what they deserved easy flow of words
Great the hero is in charge and saves the girl the guys got what they deserved easy flow of words
December 9, 2025
I thought the pacing was perfect and despite its short length there was still enough character development for you to care about what happened to everyone.
February 28, 2017
There is cringe worthy horror in the world around us, and Dan Foley is great at latching onto these real world horrors, salting them with a little bit of the supernatural, and serving them up cold.
GYPSY is a no-nonsense tale of judgement carried out for an unspeakable attack committed on a young woman. There is no excess of language, yet the entire story unfolds as a living breathing thing. This is not the first book by Foley that I have read, and I always come away satisfied that the book had an outcome. There is no poetry here, just spare and to-the-point prose.
The characters in GYPSY are well known to anyone who lives in a small, rural town. The names of these people in your town may be different, but you know them well… the bully and his posse, the friendly waitress in the diner, the put upon waitress in the local gin mill, and the less the honorable sheriff. Real people, in a real place who live their lives in a rut.
Pick up a copy of GYPSY. You'll see what I mean.
GYPSY is a no-nonsense tale of judgement carried out for an unspeakable attack committed on a young woman. There is no excess of language, yet the entire story unfolds as a living breathing thing. This is not the first book by Foley that I have read, and I always come away satisfied that the book had an outcome. There is no poetry here, just spare and to-the-point prose.
The characters in GYPSY are well known to anyone who lives in a small, rural town. The names of these people in your town may be different, but you know them well… the bully and his posse, the friendly waitress in the diner, the put upon waitress in the local gin mill, and the less the honorable sheriff. Real people, in a real place who live their lives in a rut.
Pick up a copy of GYPSY. You'll see what I mean.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews