Press Release

Santa Barbara author Howard  Eaton borrows a daring new page design feature from  a Nobel  Prize winner and uses it in his new novel, The Golden Pact. 

A new way to design the pages of a book has resulted in a rich romantic and comic novel, sharpening its focus on the hero’s mind and heart while it broadens the horizons of the storyteller’s art.

A brief synopsis of the story: Caprice Jordan Taylor, a 50-year-old oil heiress, dies, leaving a will disbursing all her money —approximately 20 million U.S. Dollars— to a few of her favorite charities in Santa Barbara, California, her home town. But before  her estate is settled, the charities’ lawyers learn that the charities must share the wealth with Caprice’s surviving husband, Dante Montepulciano. Legal mayhem and greed ensue. What appears to be a separate novel shows up at the bottom of the  pages, with Dante’s responses to the lawyers’ nonsense.  

The innovator of this structure was J. M. Coeetzee, in his 2001 novel Diary of a Bad Year.  Included in Coeetzee’s long list of awards are the coveted Booker Prize  (twice) and the Nobel Prize in Literature, 2003. These are challenging footsteps to fill, but Howard Eaton insisted on displaying this logical presentation and in so doing he has added clarity, focus, and insight into the complex mind and heart of Dante Montepulciano, the surviving widower and champion for the honor and respect owed  to his  late  wife.