Gideon Redoak-Anne Fraser

Gideon Redoak
Anne Fraser
By Light Unseen Media, May 2009, $59.00
http://bylightunseenmedia.com/
ISBN: 9780979302817

From the day he was born in 1622, Gideon Redoak was raised in a very strict Puritan family. His father the baron demanded respect as he dominated every aspect of life for his family. Gideon was not allowed to speak to single women, nor read anything except the Bible. His sister Prudence likewise was under the strict thumb of their father.

When Gideon is nineteen, his father is murdered most likely by highwaymen. Gideon becomes his sister’s guardian and takes care of his mother while running the estate he inherited. When Simon Paxson, who is of an age of his late father, arrives insisting he has a spoken deal to marry Prudence, Gideon says he has no proof and already arranged for his sister to wed James Carter, the estate steward she loves. After his sibling and James marry in 1642, Gideon hires a new steward Etienne Corbeau to run the estate at a time when three strange murders occur. He also realizes his father’s chosen bride for him, although of proper breeding and wealth, Piety fails to move him while his new employee does. Etienne seduces Gideon and turns him into a vampire. Over the years Gideon adapts even finding love, but fears his maker is not finished with him.

This is an entertaining life in a vampire saga over the centuries. Seventeenth century Gideon expected eternal punishment, as part of his Puritan upbringing, for lying about knowing Paxson’s deal and the betrothal between his sister and his steward; so there is plenty of irony as the protagonist adjusts emotionally, sexually and religiously to the change. Not for all vampire aficionados as the action is for most part off page and muted, fans of a profound character study will want to read the late Anne Fraser’s fabulous fable of the life and death and un-death of a young man.

Harriet Klausner