Mourning Wood A Novel Author:Daniel Paisner Best-selling author Daniel Paisner creates an indelible impression with an offbeat novel reminiscent of the humor found in the novels of Carl Hiassen and Peter Lefcourt. Terence Wood, a fading Hollywood icon, stages his own death, and "disappears" into the workaday world of a Maine coastal town... Axel Pimletz, a never-shined-enough-to-fa... more »de newspaper hack, catches the assignment of his nothing special career when his front page obituary of the presumed dead Wood wins him the chance to complete the man's "posthumous" memoirs... Behind a full growth of beard and a name and back-story borrowed from one of his forgettable pictures, Wood throws in with the louts and fishermen of Bar Harbor, Maine like it's in his blood... he takes a job as a costumed cartoon-crustacean character at a seaside amusement park and feels he's doing the best acting of his career... he even falls for a dramatically overweight coffee shop matron who takes him in, offers girth and succor, and eventually wises to Wood's secret... Pimletz, desperate to write his way out of his lone opportunity, begins to take on the trappings of Wood's life... he lives in the great man's cabin... he sleeps with the great man's estranged (and strangely widowed) wife... he does what little he can to make sense of the big mess Wood has left behind. Meanwhile, Wood celebrates his transformation and learns to greet each day like it's brand-new... Pimletz tries on Wood's abandoned persona and struggles with the fit... and Wood's left-behind family (his son, an NYU film student with a fruit-flavored drinking problem, and his variously problemed ex-wives) take turns mourning the great man's death, in what ways they can manage. Eventually, Pimletz's assumption of the fallen icon's persona takes him to Bar Harbor, where he hopes to track down the misdirected letters Wood had meant to deliver to his son Norman, to explain his sudden "death" and make repairs...in the end, Wood's old world collides with his new one, and he returns to the rest of his life with his overweight coffee shop matron in tow, and his "ghostwriter" on call... the man Wood was has indeed died in the fallout from his staged death, although it's not entirely clear what kind of man he has become...« less