The Connection by David Billingsley

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Our story begins in the sleepy, mundane town of Dinley in West Texas. As a small town, it’s a close-knit community. To live in this town would mean you’d know almost everyone as you move around. So, when a stranger arrives and manages to uproot the peaceful lives of the citizens, by having a strange physiological and psychological effect on them, we find ourselves in the midst of a tantalizing conspiracy that has its roots embedded in the history of our characters.

One of our main characters is Sandy, who is barely living her life, and always on everybody’s list of worries. She doesn’t seem to have any motivation nor any drive to renew herself after the tragic death of her husband and son, and while she’s got everyone’s sympathy, she’d rather just be forgotten. She is shown as clearly disturbed and under severe depression as her suicide attempts have been cited numerous times, very morbidly she finds bringing those memories back with her dark humor which shows us a persona unable to take responsibility of her trauma all those years ago. Her father is the one who is most worried about her having experienced one of her suicide attempts. He checks up on her weekly to make sure she’s living and has also assigned her a type of guard, a man called AJ, who keeps an eye on her and works along with her at the radio station.

This idyllic lifestyle is interrupted one day, by a tremendous din that is unidentifiable. It temporarily causes a town-wide blackout and as this phenomenon occurs, Sandy experiences a weird mix of emotions, the most notable being a short-lived euphoria that stuns her. This is one of the first moments we come to see the peculiar impact that this certain stranger has on her. The stranger is later mentioned as Sandy leaves the station. She spots a man with an expressionless and bland face heading towards the town. She is unexpectedly drawn to the man for reasons unknown and leaves this encounter not learning much about him despite her hounding him for answers.

We find ourselves shrouded in the mystery around this stranger and his purpose in visiting a drab town like Dinley. This uncertainty builds our curiosity in understanding his story and further introduces a whole new aspect of this narrative with our mysterious visitor. While having a positive effect on the women, the stranger, whom we later come to know as Jake Kellum, has a serious negative effect on every man except AJ, Sandy’s father, and the town sheriff John Swenson. This effect translates so strongly on the men that it incites an unexplained rage and paranoia to a point where even the most upstanding of men wish to kill Jake. The reason those men mentioned above did not feel the same as the rest is due to a connection they have with Jake which we later learn about. This connection, however, is nothing compared to the one shared between Sandy and Jake.

As we see the story between Sandy and Jake progress, we find an alternate focus that begins with the story of the Walkers, who once resided in the very same home as Sandy does now. The Walkers were shown to have an obscure sense of life with almost no contact with their townsfolk. Few found them amiable, and for those who cared enough, they were still left clueless to the enigma the Walkers were treated as. As we delve into the history of the Walker family, we begin to draw parallels that both confuse and make the reader even more interested in why the author focuses on this family. All the confusion and mystery are addressed as we read, and the fascinating part is how the author connects these seemingly unrelated families together.

Initially, the reader might be frustrated with all the vagueness of the plot and the apparently unrelated bits of story that the author brings, but it’s worth the wait as we see a gratifying storyline come together just as the plot begins to thicken. The story is well thought out and the twists the story takes leave you in great anticipation, which is rivaled only by the best of mysteries.

This narrative is unique in its approach to the sci-fi genre as the reader finds themselves more captivated by the history and its connections to our set of characters rather than the arrival of an alien being from another dimension. This book touches upon the many facets of modern writing that we come to appreciate as we continue to immerse ourselves in this storyline. For this very reason, we encourage you to give this book a shot.

“Good Books Don't Give Up All Their Secrets At Once.”- Stephen King