Only if you have been in the deepest valley can you know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.
-Richard Nixon
New Territory: Explorers of Freedom - Yes, I now find that freedom frightens me
I write this on September 11, 2005, with voices from a television program behind me telling the horrendous stories of the terrorist attack of the World Trade Center in the United States on a September 11, 2001 -- a long time ago. Yes, it seems long ago for many. I can tell by the way a great portion of the world is reacting.
But I’m here to tell you about another horrendous time. The story, Cold River, by Jozef Imrich, is a surreal slice of the Communist Iron Curtain and a man who took the path less traveled to explore the cold and bitter reality of freedom. I’ve learned a lot from this book, I’m ashamed to say. Yes, ashamed; and worse -- frightened. Hmmm, you may be thinking if you are privy to the writings and ramblings of Roseberry Books. Isn’t this a writer who leads readers to believe in giant rats and bugs, haunted elevators and the mysteries of the tarot. What could possibly be so frightening?
As I’ve edited Cold River for Double Dragon Publishing, I’ve lived the life of Jozef Imrich – right along side him, eavesdropping from that reader’s place just outside the turmoil, the love, the fear, the bravery. That safe place – you know the place. The one that calls for the dinner dishes to be washed, the day job to be worked, the bills to be paid. The place that provides a nice soft bed allowing you to wake to four walls that are familiar and safe. A place that allows you to put a story aside. But inside this book, inside Jozef’s world, things were different. There was no safe place.
Jozef was free at one time – and then that freedom was ripped from him. Sliced away as surely as a sword tears through one of the horror creatures I’m prone to write about. Not only was his personal freedom severed, but also there was a severing of family, of country, of life as he knew it. I traveled with him through those times. This true story is of his escape to freedom and the price he was forced to pay to have that liberty. It talks of a precious thing, a thing of beauty -- this freedom.
• . P. Roseberry [Cold River ; Cold War River ; Publishers Sue Google Over Plans to Digitize Copyrighted Books]