The Fountain

by Christopher Farris

Deep in an Ozarks holler lurks an ancient source of power called the Fountain. It drives men and women mad and leads them to do strange and terrible things. It is growing in strength. Only an invisible Wall, held in place by centuries of sacrificial magic, protects an unwitting mountain community from a descent into bloodshed and madness. Now, the Wall fades and its last defender, Abe, an old man steeped in ritual and secrets, fights frantically to shore it up. His powers are waning and his fears are rising. Jill, a young journalist, struggles to understand the mystery of the Fountain and of her own violent family history and Jack, a former Marine running from his past, may have the solution pumping through his veins. As the past comes back to haunt the present, will another act of great evil be the solution?

276 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 4, 2021

Reviews

[Lorna S.]

Author Christopher Farris had my full attention from the page inside the front cover. "The Fountain" was a gift for my January birthday, from our daughter, who knows Mr. Farris from a course they shared at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville AR.

Mr. Farris's plot is a tight account of the experiences -over a rather short time - of a few characters who interact with each other in complicated relationships. They live "near an Ozarks holler," themselves perched on a mountain high above a site that is the ages-old home to a power that is a restless entity, wild and impatient.

The characters are finely drawn, and feel familiar to this reader. The landscape is also familiar, with towns to which I have related all my life. The adventure told is more like a news event, meticulously written up in one of area small-town newspapers. The account is convincing.

The tourist-court setting of much of the story is on the east side of "old '71 highway." There is another chilling fictional event which occurred on the west side of "old highway '71." It is "Twisted Solitude," whose gifted author is Marcus Woodward, who writes from Fort Smith AR. These two tales cannot be astutely compared, but it is safe to say that a person not familiar with the "Mountain Folk" whom readers will meet in these two books . . . . are better to leave them unstirred!

Mr. Farris is launched into the world of writers of classically good fiction. If he will keep writing, I will keep reading! With anticipation and pleasure.

- Lorna S. Pryor.

[Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

The constellation of characters in Chris Farris’s novel seems to me thoroughly and enjoyably Jungian. There’s old Abe, whose memory and ancient manuscripts, like the collective unconscious, preserve an understanding of the powerful residue of evil that haunts the valley below the innkeeper’s Moondust Motor Inn in the Boston Mountains on Highway 71. Jack Diaz, a “hopeless drunk” in the old man’s words, shows up in the Ozarks on a whim—his mother, of Native American descent, having been born in LaFayette, fictionalized Fayetteville, I’m guessing. Jack has hit bottom in his life as an ex-Marine, but Abe, a reformed alcoholic himself, reckons he can groom Jack to help him protect the community from the dangerous Fountain and ultimately to take his place as the guardian of the Wall. The feminine side of the Jack-and-Jill equation, Jill Woodley, is Abe’s journalist granddaughter and a formidable nemesis to both Jack and Abe. A truth seeker and modern woman, she isn’t about to be snookered by their patriarchal hogwash and rejects any talk of protection and of animal sacrifice as a means of strengthening the Wall. Ronnie, the little cowboy and, as the shadow figure, a necessary albeit loathsome component of the constellation, hovers nearby in the deep valley after plunging into the depths of the Fountain, a force of phenomenal, dark strength extracted from the monstrous wrongdoings of the Spanish Conquest. If it was at one time a fountain of youth, after many years of feeding on the blood of indigenous peoples, the Fountain has begun to infect the citizens of the valley with anger, hatred, and violence.
Farris does an amazing job of balancing these characters, splitting his third-person close perspective among the four of them. But readers are never confused, always knowing where they are, when, and from whose point of view the story is told. This is an entertaining read, a real page-turner, but Farris doesn’t pass up the chance to insinuate a profound understanding of individuals and their role in a community. If you purchase this amazing first novel, you will consider it money well spent. You should know though, that it is plenty scary, and if, like me, you live in the Ozarks, you may never drive old 71 again. If the signs announcing the number of deaths on such-and-such a stretch haven’t already deterred you, The Fountain will quash any thought of taking this lonely road through the mountains to I-40.

[Jill Bowman · Rating 4 out of 5]

That was a whole lot of gruesome fun. It’s especially delightful as it takes place in my adopted ‘home town’ of West ‘Port’. Let’s hope we all make it through.

It was the right book to read on front of the fire on a wintery weekend.

[Christopher Farris · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's my book. :) I love it. Haha.