A wanted man. An innocent child.
And a miracle that could tear them apart.
So begins Davey’s Savior, my 2016 novel and my first independently published work:
HE CHECKED HIS MIRRORS carefully, making sure no one followed. He kept his speed down, trying to blend in between the speeders and the too slow, keeping the reflected glare from headlights and taillights to a minimum on the wet roadway. Rain-slicked highways were always hazardous, especially at this hour. But tonight was all the more treacherous, as he was making his escape with the most precious of cargo.
Davey’s Savior
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The rain lessened for a moment, streaks scattering across the windshield like shooting stars with every pass of the wiper blades. Streetlights were rare on this section of California 101, perhaps to preserve tourists’ view of the Pacific, but every one he passed, every headlight or taillight encountered, lit the droplets on his windshield like a sky full of stars.
Then, a flashing light ahead. A steady yellow-orange reflecting from the wet roadway. On and bright for a few seconds, then dark, then bright again. A pass of the wipers brought the lights into clarity, revealing an electronic traffic sign, sending a message.
AMBER ALERT, it flashed. CHILD ABDUCTION.
He gripped the wheel a little more tightly, his nerves battling his confidence.
The sign flashed the number of a license plate. CUSTOM PLATE STKBRKR. BLK MERCEDES SEDAN. A number and description familiar to him.
Then, IF SEEN CALL 911.
He took a breath to steady himself, to revive his confidence as he passed the flashing sign and its message. He knew. No one would be mmaking any calls or reporting any locations that night. The car was parked on the sand of a secluded beach near Guadalupe, 50 miles south, empty and growing cold in the dark of night.
He knew because he abandoned it there.
So what’s Davey’s Savior about? I believe it’s a story that hasn’t been told before, an intimate drama taking place mainly over four days in a California beach town, in which an apparent miracle threatens to expose a fugitive father hiding in plain sight and his innocent four-year-old son. It’s driven by memorable and interesting characters, bearing themes of fatherhood and misplaced faith, with tension and poignancy that brings many readers to tears and leaves them with a warm feeling at story’s end. Every reader has taken away their own interpretation and meaning, coming away moved and satisfied. It’s been compared to John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany and Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News, with one reader described it as “a great beach read with depth.”
Here’s what readers say:
“What he did with his story is masterful: not just in its obfuscation of the plot twist, but in completely leading this reader in one direction at first, and then turning my expectations upside down in terms of theme, as well… By setting the reader up and then dropping his twists and turns, Tim Savage makes them think right along with the characters … connecting them to the book even more deeply. The book I found so slow to start was impossible to put down by the time I reached its second half. Davey’s Savior is the literary equivalent of a log flume ride: you drift along for most of it, but the climb and the plunge at the end are so satisfying that you’ll end up wanting to go again.”
-Ang D’Onofrio
“Timothy Savage beautifully balances dramatic tension, mood-setting description, and creating very real characters in his suspenseful, poignant first novel. The opening tension builds over chapters, as Savage carefully constructs his story from inside his main characters’ relationship out — using a strange and innocent coincidence as the catalyst for suspense and the means through which many of the characters’ true colors are revealed. By the time the pieces of the story fall together like a thunderclap, and the heartbreaking confession is made, the storm swirling around the pair takes on a new ferocity, Savage had me questioning many versions of “virtue” and “kindness” and “faith.” I plan to send copies to several friends — mine is too precious to loan out.”
-D. Dilworth
“The man-on-the-run aspect is sure to please the CSI lovers, but its the internal struggles that speak to my 49-year-old heart. What children do to your sense of self. Trying to make sense of religious oxymorons. Balancing work and love. And what happens when it seems to all go wrong. And even though I have never been to the California Shore, were I an artist, I could paint you a picture of Avila just from the salty, windy, sandy descriptions in this book. A smashing first novel, and I hope there are more to come.”
-D. Swaffar