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The Ancestor

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This title is difficult to categorize. It wasn't what I was expecting from the author, but I enjoyed it anyway. It certainly put many things in perspective. A great read for those who like alternative lives.

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I'll let the large number of high ratings and reviews speak for themselves, and simply recommend this for historical mystery/suspense fans.

I really appreciate the review copy!!

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this was a really unique read, the characters were great and I enjoyed that the different genres worked well together.

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The Ancestor
By Lee Matthew Goldberg

I’ll be honest – it was the title that got me! An ancestor coming back to life. . .my dream come true.

Brace yourself. This novel is that-ish. . .and but down a different road. There’s murder, theft, Alaska, snow, blood, family, lust – bridled and unbridled, shapeshifting, indigenous people, culture and shamanism and gold. This was not the warm, fuzzy genealogical tale I bargained for! The ending was completely unexpected.

A Sincere Thanks to Lee Matthew Goldberg, All Due Respect and NetGalley for an ARC to read and review.

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I was very intrigued by the book description and the book lived up to it.

This is the story of Wyatt and Travis, great-great-grandfather and great-great-grandson. Wyatt was somehow frozen in time and thawed centuries later only to learn that his entire family was long-dead. Except for his descendants.

Of course, he can't just tell people he was frozen in time and who he really is so he has to make up a story. Travis likes Wyatt, although sometimes he feels like something isn't quite right. And there are others around Travis who are a bit suspicious as well but no one can quite put their finger on what it is that bothers them.

Ultimately, Wyatt decides he needs a new life in the present time and figures out exactly how he's going to accomplish that. And it's the pursuit of that goal that makes this book so interesting because it's not as simple as "I'm going to accept where I am and simply start over."

The book is a bit slow at times. There are some areas where it's quite repetitive and you could easily skip a few pages without missing anything. Some of the characters are a little annoying. But overall this was an excellent book that I would highly recommend to others.

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Thank you to NetGalley and Lee Matthew Goldberg for the advanced reader's copy.

Wyatt Barlow from the late 1800s is somehow frozen while searching for gold and for some reason defrosts alive in the modern day. Great concept. How does he deal with the modern world? And when he connects with his decendents, how does that go? Another great question. I couldn't wait to find out.

I really had a tough time getting through this book. I couldn't find a single character that I could connect with. Everyone just seemed so unpleasant, they writing seemed to drag for me and I saw the ending coming. I had read there was a surprise ending, so I kept reading to see what it was, but it was exactly what was obviously coming.

I give the book 2 stars for an excellent concept.

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The Ancestor was a thriller? A mystery? An adventure? A puzzle? Yes, all of these things. I enjoyed the description of life in Alaska, back in the 1800's and also in the current day. This book also gives a glimpse into the mind of a true narcissist. Try as he might to be caring and sensitive in some areas, Wyatt turned out to be mostly about himself.
An intriguing read.

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Have you ever wondered what it must seem like to reincarnate? Or, for the matter, survive for a really prolonged period, perhaps longer than a centenary!? How will that feel?

When I selected this novel by reading just the title, I assumed it must be something representing the protagonist's lineage and how that influences their world. I took a gamble and really ran in blind, without actually knowing the book's blurb. And I am happy that I decided to do that as the book was a wonder in all manners. I could never believe that a narrative could scheme in such a refined yet effective way.

Two characters are isolated because of different circumstances, yet connected together in such a way that can't be readily agreeable. Some sections of the tale, I think, run very quick while it pulls down a bit in some others. I wish the consistency could hold better. Nevertheless, the writer has made a notable investigation on the topics of Alaskan History, the Gold Rush Expeditions, the indigenous Indian tribes, and the likes.

Overall, I wouldn't complain about going back to this page-turner book once again and re-live the offbeat experiences of the heroes. The premise is very unique and leaves a beautiful remark.

I would like to thank the Publisher, All Due Respect, the Author Lee Matthew Goldberg, and NetGalley for the book's ARC. In exchange, I am giving an honest evaluation; all the views and conclusions are of my own.

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You know when you’re on to a winner when you’re gripping your kindle and shouting, ‘Nooooo!’ It took me a while to get into the Alaskan dialect but once there I was frozen back in time with Wyatt Barlow and the search for his descendants! There they all were waiting for him, deeply ensconced in their own family troubles. . Back we went to the Klondike of the late 19th century where Wyatt found what he was looking for and brought knowledge back with him - would it help or destroy his family! Well, I had a gold rush all of my own in the need to discover how it would all enfold! I was not disappointed!

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This book was a bit like a time travel story for me. A man from the 1800’s wakes up in present-day Alaska, having been frozen for almost 200 years. I liked how the story takes the reader through the initial confusion of Wyatt, our frozen-in-time character. He is unsure of where he is and who he is. I thought that Lee Matthew Goldberg did an excellent job of bringing the reader into the story right from the beginning with this opening scene.

As the story progresses, we find Wyatt spiraling into this obsessive character. When I chose this book, I didn’t realize it would have this thriller aspect, so I was surprised when Wyatt finds who he believes is his great-great grandson, and becomes overly-attached to him, and his family. This obsessive behavior really turned this into an interesting read for me!

I thought that the story was well-written, and worth reading! It had this mix of historical fiction, science fiction, and thriller that kept me interested from start to finish! I loved the insight into the main character’s mind. His adaptation to the world he wakes up in was interesting, and I enjoyed watching him learn and change.

The connection between Wyatt, and his great-great-grandson Travis, was deep and emotionally written. I found their stories to both hold interest for me. At times, I found the narrative to be a bit lengthy, and I would have liked a most concise story, but overall, this was an exciting story.

To Read or Not To Read:
I would recommend The Ancestor for readers that enjoy a what-if story, and a mix of historical and science fiction!

I was provided a gifted copy of this book for free. I am leaving my review voluntarily.

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I requested this book because it sounded so very interesting. And it was. Seeing as it’s not my normal type of read, it was also a bit hard for me to get through. I felt some parts dragged on too long. A man from the past has been frozen for 100 years. Meets his family and decides to pick up where he left off before he was frozen. He’s creepy with some of his actions but evolves to be slightly less creepy. There are a lot of characters and at times I had trouble remembering who was who. But I still enjoyed the story. It kept me wanting to know ‘how?’ And kept me reading to the end

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In present day Laner, Alaska Travis Barstow and his best friend are out hunting caribou.  At the same moment, a man wakes up out of an icy tomb not far away from where Travis shoots.  The man does not remember much, but a mirror in his pocket and a journal dated 1898 will help him fill in the gaps.  The man's first instinct is survival.  Interestingly, Travis Barstow looks like the frozen man's mirror image.  The man watches Travis from a distance and as the memories come back, he knows they are connected.  The man remembers who he is-Wyatt Barstow, and what he was here for- gold.  Wyatt engrains himself in Travis' life and makes his obsession Travis' own.  Together, they hunt for the gold that Wyatt was so close to over 100 years ago.  However, every day that Wyatt remembers more about his past, he envies Travis' present and feels the need to fulfill the life he left behind.

The Ancestor is a unique thriller blending past and present, family drama and psychological suspense.  I was hooked from the very beginning as Wyatt thawed from the ice with no knowledge of who he was.  The characters are completely created and each adds a separate element to the story.  I was engrossed in Wyatt's unfolding memories and how it changed him as a person as well as my perception of his character.  I definitely enjoyed Wyatt's journal entries from 1898 as well as the chapters written from his point of view while exploring Alaska in that time period with the descriptions of a beautiful and wild unsettled Alaska, small villages and Native settlements.   I was amazed at how adaptable Wyatt was reentering a strange world more than 100 years after he froze as well as how careful he was with the truth of who he was.  The mystery of Wyatt's condition and why he awoke when he did carried the suspense throughout the story as well as his intentions with Travis and his family.  The plot slowly but thoughtfully layers as more details are revealed about Travis' life, Wyatt's history and the daily life of the residents of Laner.  While I knew where the story was headed, I was still surprised by the ending and would love if the story continued.  

This book was received for free in return for an honest review.

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I....don't quite know what I think...of this book....? I was pulled in by the cover and blurb. It's not a quick read but not a slow read. It's kind of a thriller, has an element of horror, and the dual timelines make it historical fiction as well; I'm not sure what genre I would stick it in.

The Ancestor by Lee Matthew Goldberg is a dark, disturbing read written in a distinct style that I quite like. I enjoyed the family dynamic and romance between the main characters of the Barlow family--it was realistic and unexpected.

The ending though. It's both satisfying and I hate it. It's given me a "book hangover" for sure, I'm reeling in my emotions over what I wish would have happened, what is going to happen next, could it have been any other way?

This book is a great creative story. It won't be for everyone, it's strange and unnerving. But I think this is the kind of book that someone can like and not like at the same time, or at least that's how I feel about it. It certainly has me interested in other things the author has written, and as someone who is trying my hand at writing fiction, this was inspirational and a good mental exercise of a book. I enjoyed reading about the gold rush and Alaskan culture and nature.

Thank you NetGalley and All Due Respect for a copy of this ebook in exchange for my honest review.

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~First and foremost, thank you NetGalley and All Due Respect for sending me an E-ARC of this title for an honest review.~
Rating: 4/5

Wyatt Barlow is a prospector born in the 1800's who becomes frozen in time while on the hunt for gold in Alaska, only to wake up 120 years later; be it fate or coincidence, he meets his great-great grandson, Travis Barlow. Wyatt struggles to piece together his memories, find the family he lost, and regain the prize that slipped through his fingers.

Now, this book requires you to hold your suspension of disbelief (what fictional book doesn't?) and trust that someone could live for over a hundred years in a frozen coma; I had no problem going along with the logic there, and while I did enjoy this book, there was something that stopped me from loving it. Even though I didn't rush to pick the book back up every time I put it down, I really liked the concept and I thought the execution was good--the ending was something I didn't see coming until the very last pages. And what a wild ride the last quarter of the book was! It was a slow burn until that point, but I couldn't stop reading when everything started to unfold.

I think my disconnect with this book boils down to the characters--besides Travis' wife Callie, Aylen, and Wyatt--everyone was very bland and hard to care about. There wasn't much emphasis on Callie or Aylen, maybe a chapter or two, but they were largely just... There. Barely any purpose besides being a small accessory to the main characters (Travis and Wyatt) and the overall plot. Don't even get me started on Travis' "best friend" Grayson (who you see three times as much as either Callie or Aylen). His personality was toxic and I didn't like him from the beginning. Every time he came into a scene I found myself skipping his lines.

All in all I think this is a solid book that could easily been five stars, bland characters aside, if the entire book was as intense as the last quarter. I would still recommend this to anyone who likes historical fiction.

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This was an interesting book, to say the least. It was historical, suspenseful, and essentially involved time travel (via being frozen for 120 years). I think it's because it was all of these things at once, I never really settled onto the story like I have with other books or really "clicked" worth the characters. But it was a unique and intriguing book.

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After living in Alaska for several years, I can never resist an Alaska story when it catches my reading eye. The Ancestor is definitely a fever dream of an Alaska story. Ironic when you think about it, as Alaska is not exactly a place that brings fever dreams to mind. More like the opposite; frozen dreams.

But this is that too, one man’s frozen dream of a past that only he remembers, and his fever dream in the present to recapture the life he once had – not by going back to the past, but by recreating a new version of his old life in the present, no matter how many sins he has to commit along the way.

The Ancestor is kind of a Rip Van Winkle story, if ol’ Rip, instead of being meek, mild, easygoing and henpecked, was instead an amoral sociopath of a serial killer.

Not quite, but closer than any other description I can come up with, considering that old saw about the past being another country where they do things differently.

Because that’s where Wyatt Barlow is from. The past. He went into the ice not terribly far from Nome, Alaska, in 1898, and woke up in 2020. The world has changed – even in Alaska. (Although it’s not mentioned specifically, he probably defrosted because the permafrost in Alaska is melting due to climate change. I digress. I have a feeling I’m going to do that a lot in this review.)

When Wyatt wanders into town, looking pretty much like death warmed over – as that’s none too far from the truth – he discovers that his descendants are still in the area, living in the tiny town of Laner. That he has a doppelganger descendant he hears called “Trav” who turns out to have a beautiful wife and a baby boy who resemble Wyatt’s own lost wife and baby boy.

A baby boy who turns out to be Trav – actually Travis’ – great grandfather. Making Wyatt his great-great-grandfather. Not that either of them have the relationship figured out exactly at the time.

But Wyatt Barlow is a man used to getting what he wants, no matter who or what might stand in his way. So he hatches a plot to involve himself in his great-great-grandson’s life, with an eye to taking over that life.

After all, that uncanny resemblance between them must be good for something. There must be a purpose to it. A purpose that Wyatt can exploit, just as he has exploited so many other things and people in his life, in order to achieve what he wants. Just like he found the gold that brought him to Alaska in the first place. Just like he killed his partner to get that gold.

And now he’s found a way to get back what he lost. A wife and a son. Who won’t even know that he’s taken Travis’ place. All he has to do is become Travis – and put him under that ice. After all, in the here and now, there can be only one Travis Barlow. And Wyatt intends to be that Travis, no matter what it takes.

Escape Rating B: I’ll admit to being all over the place on this one. It certainly kept me turning pages. It’s also not exactly what the blurb says it is, either. I’d certainly debate whether Wyatt falls in love with Travis’ wife. What he’s feeling, and what he’s planning, aren’t nearly so romantic. Or anything even close to that.

There are two stories here. One is the obvious, about Wayne and Travis and the way that Wayne inveigles himself into Travis’ life, his family and eventually his place in the world. But the story that follows Travis’ life and that of his family reminds me a lot of the stories about life in the tiny towns sprinkled through the state. That Nome is the nearest “big” place to Laner, and that Nome only has a population of 4,000 people, gives a hint of the size and remoteness of the place. Callie’s part of this story, Travis’ California-born wife, also feels familiar. Anchorage, with a population of nearly 300,000, feels remote and small relative to anything in the Lower 48, or as it’s called in Alaska, “Outside”. So Callie’s feelings of near-claustrophobia, complete isolation and frequent boredom are all too real. She loves Travis, she loves Laner, but it is a damn hard life and it seriously gets to her.

The other story is Wayne’s story about life during the Klondike Gold Rush. Not that plenty of stories about the Gold Rush haven’t been told before. And perhaps that’s where some of the issues lie.

Wayne has a difficult time remembering everything that happened to him in the past. Saying his brain is a bit frozen isn’t exactly a stretch. That he survived in the ice is a bit of handwavium, as all time travel stories generally are. That’s the part the reader has to take on faith, and it works that way.

But the way he gets back his memory is to take heroin. Again, not that there isn’t plenty of it available, along with meth and booze, in those tiny remote villages. It’s the same as everywhere else, perhaps even more so considering the long, dark, cold winters. Any escape is chased, even if its just an escape inside one’s own head.

I think where my willing suspension of disbelief went a bit haywire was not just in the way that Wyatt recovered his memories, but what he remembered. And that the consequences of what is clearly already an addiction aren’t dealt with at all.


Smith at bar in Skagway, Alaska, 1898
On the one hand, Wayne’s heroin coma lets him relive his experiences in their seeming entirety. And they are unflinching when it comes to his abandonment of his family back in Washington state, the murder he committed on his way to Sitka, and the murders he commits along his way from Juneau to Dawson City to “The Unknown”, which turns out to be Anvil Creek near Laner. But one of those killings is of a bunch of conmen led by one of Alaska’s more colorful legends, “Soapy” Smith. The problem is that the events in Wyatt’s story occur after Smith was gunned down, extremely publicly, in Skagway. His body was even autopsied. There is no doubt that Smith was dead before he met Wyatt. Which threw off my perception of the accuracy of Wyatt’s memories.

Except those memories really did lead him to the gold. So the question of just how much Wyatt dreamed vs. how much he actually remembered is still bothering me. A lot.

And that I’m thinking about this so much after I closed the book is just an example of what made this book so compelling – even as it drove me crazy.

There is a lot of darkness in this book. While this story begins as winter sort of turns to spring, the fact is that daylight hours in Nome in winter average around 4 hours per day in December and January. It’s a dark place in the winter, and a cold place most of the year. The temps are only in the 30s in April when this story begins and don’t get to 60 even in July. The cold and the dark are part of the “ambiance”.

At the same time, Travis’ family is going through some rough times. The economy is down, the big employers have all closed, his grandfather is dying, his brother was murdered and Travis is generally depressed. Wyatt’s sudden advent into Laner may not be a good thing, but it is a different thing in a place that craves novelty.

Wyatt’s own story is itself dark. It’s brutal in regards to his abandonment of his own family, and equally so about the obsession that consumes his own thoughts. He wants what he wants and no one is allowed to stand in his way. I ended the story feeling sorry for Callie because she’s now married to a monster who will do anything to have her and to keep her, whether she wants to be kept or not.

So there are no happy endings here. Instead, The Ancestor is dark and chilling every step of its enthralling way. A terrific chilling read for this long, hot summer.

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This book started off on a bad foot for me. I’m not sure if the author was trying to set a scene, create a unique character voice or what, but the incomplete sentences don’t allow me to escape into a book. I kept going though, and I just don’t think this story was my cup of tea. Too far reaching but yet not quite far enough in some way.

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A very unusual book, set in two time zones with related protagonists. At first I wasn't sure but I persevered and I loved it. Unique, a little overwhelmed with the premise at times which is good because it challenges, and a great read.

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This novel was different from anything I’ve ever read. In order to fully immerse myself in this book, I had to suspend my disbelief. I had to believe that, for some humans, it’s possible to be frozen for over a century & return to life the same age he was when he was frozen in time. This is what happened to Wyatt Barlow in 1898. He was buried by an avalanche while searching for gold in Alaska. When the snow melts Wyatt awakens 120 years later, still 38 years old, with amnesia & one of his eyes sealed shut. He meets his Barlow relatives in Laner, Alaska, descendants of his son Joe. Travis Barlow is his great great grandson. He also meets his grandson Papa Clifford, who is 93 years old & Wyatt’s son’s son. As Wyatt learns to navigate his current life in the 21st century, bits & pieces of his past life return, & the man he was in 1898 resurfaces. It’s not a pretty picture. The man Wyatt becomes is the same man he was in the 19th century——a manipulative opportunist who will go to any length to get what he wants.
Wyatt goes from homeless to purposeful when he remembers where the gold he was searching for in 1898 was hidden. He & Travis go looking for the gold & find $160,000 worth of it hidden for a century. When he cuts Travis in on 50% of it, I found myself thinking he’s not such a bad guy. He just wants his relatives to prosper.
I greatly enjoyed this novel! The author’s writing is very descriptive & beautiful. I was transported to Alaska’s frozen tundra & endless light of a northern Alaska summer. The characters were realistically drawn with empathy & affection.
This was a beautiful novel that I will recall for a long time. Thank you, Down & Out Books & Net Galley for the opportunity to read & review this book. My opinions are my own & freely given.

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Quite an unusual book. A man seems to be frozen in Alaska with no idea who he is. Another man is hunting in Alaska. The first man realizes that he is looking at someone who looks just like himself. He has no idea who he is but this man that looks just like him must be a clue. He has to figure out who he is and how he got here.

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