Book Information
-
This podiobook is in progress
Share and Enjoy!
The Flaw in the Fabric, Book 1 of A Travellers Guide for Lost Souls by Jim T. Lindsey
Fiction
Click the arrow below to listen to the first episode of this free audio book:
Along the Granite Coast of Nova Scotia, the boundaries of space and time are developing stress cracks. Through one such crack, brought on by a hurricane in the ghost-infested province of Nova Scotia, two brothers reincarnate after spending two hundred years as lost souls in the neither-here-nor-there land of the In Between. They’re as surprised to be back as Raymond Kidd is to find them in his basement. While wondering how to cope with his unnatural visitors, Raymond himself falls through another crack which sends him back to his life as a 19th century merchant captain, where he discovers he has a wife and child he loves as much as he loves his 21st century family. In the midst of trying to cope with that dilemma, his wife of the future is summoning him back, but when he returns it’s not the way that anyone intended. In between here and there, Raymond is given a mission. He must write A Travellers Guide for Lost Souls.
Review
“Eighteenth century time travel, grinding existential angst and hearty dollops of Buddhist-flavored metaphysics combine to make Jim Lindsey’s ‘A Travellers Guide for Lost Souls’ a delightful adventure to read. ”
Standard-Times – Perry Flippin, editor emeritus
San Angelo, Texas
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives 3.0 United States License.
Audio Quality: 
Out of 5 ratings
Narration Quality: 
Out of 5 ratings
Writing Quality:
Out of 5 ratings
Overall Rating:
Out of 5 ratings
Chapters
| Title | Description | Date Created |
| PB-LostSouls-01 (17.68 MB) | "Down-on-his-luck tour guide Raymond Kidd hears voices in the basement of his 200-year-old cottage by the sea, thinks there might be something down there that will change his life, and abandons his companion of the night to go see. The next morning, Raymond awakes with a hangover to find himself alone with a big wind blasting through his open windows and rearranging the loose contents of his room. He goes to his shrine room to meditate and finds it in a similar state of chaos. He meditates anyway. It doesn’t seem to do much good. Uninformed about the approaching hurricane, Raymond goes on to work at the historic Keith’s Brewery in Halifax. Some drunken university students disrupt his last tour of the day. Trying to restore order, he suffers from the vicious reaction of one of the students, who is also a football player." | Oct 11, 2011 |
| PB-LostSouls-02 (20.69 MB) | While nursing a bloody split lip, Raymond discusses with a much younger tour guide the questionable value of being middle-aged and reduced to making minimum wage. In the process, Raymond finds out about the hurricane. A bike ride through the onset of the hurricane ends in Camp Hill Cemetery as Raymond crashes into a marble monument. To his aid in the rain and the wind comes a man in a three-cornered hat carrying a fish oil lantern. Raymond’s smashed glasses and bicycle are mysteriously repaired on the spot. Raymond makes it to his truck. He’s about to back out when Rose Renneker runs out of her house in her nightgown. It’s her parking space that she lends him, he’s late, and she’s worried about him. When she tries to kiss him, he sees an awful sight. He stops at the hospital, but an equally awful sight greets him there. Back home, he forts up in his favorite chair with a mug of warm whisky. A loud crash wakes him from a doze. At the front door he is greeted by something he never wanted to see, the most awful sight of all. | Oct 11, 2011 |
| PB-LostSouls-03 (35.18 MB) | Raymond does everything he can think of to calm himself down. Meditation helps, but also sharpens his senses. He hears that the sump pump, which should be keeping the basement from flooding, is not running. Meanwhile Cat, the wife from whom he is separated, calls for phone sex. A flooded basement confronts Raymond, with the water rising. He goes into the crawl space under the house, half-swimming, to find out what is wrong with the sump pump. What he finds is the worst thing that has happened to him yet. And he thought ghosts might be unpleasant. As if in a dream, Captain Oliver Cole, after taking stock of where and when and who he is, crosses a snowy street in nineteenth century Halifax to return to his loved ones but is felled by a carriage on the way and then robbed by the man who helps him up of something worth more to him than money. Waking in his own bed as Raymond and not Oliver Cole, Raymond is greeted by Angle, who rescued him from an awful fate in the crawlspace and is one of the ghosts from his basement. Angle persuades him to help release his brother Octave from the basement too. In the process, Raymond loses them both. | Oct 11, 2011 |
| PB-LostSouls-04 (19.46 MB) | Nettie McEachern, an inveterate walker, is on her way back to the village in the aftermath of the hurricane when she encounters Sheila Littlefair with her baby carriage. They gossip about the damages from the storm. Raymond, whose village nickname is Booda Ray, receives more than honourable mention. How was Angle to know he could still teleport? He’s alive now. But here they are in Rogue’s Roost, a wild remote cove where their father’s pirate ship used to lie in wait. And they have lost their clothes and the bugs are biting. Their rescuer Victor Cooley turns out to be another lost soul. But he has rum! After a lonesome day dealing with hurricane damage, Raymond adjourns to his shrine room and contemplates his long run of bad luck. He is interrupted by the reappearance of Angle. | Oct 11, 2011 |
| PB-LostSouls-05 (23.72 MB) | Angle and Octave have returned from their boat ride with Victor in an astonishing way, and Octave has suffered from it. Taking care of the younger brother, and cleaning a mountain of cod, takes the rest of the day. An exhausted Raymond lies down with his laptop to record the story Angle tells him of the demise of the two brothers. Raymond emails the strange story of Angle and Octave to his mother, though she cannot read it, and has no way of knowing that it will be received by his father, who can, and who already considers Raymond to be a prodigal son. We hear the story itself, of the sinking of the Queen Mab, the fate of the pirate captain who was the father of the brothers, the departure of their mother, the sawing in half of the house they inherited (which divides them as well), and their death. | Oct 11, 2011 |
| PB-LostSouls-06 (23.76 MB) | The burial of the brothers is debated, and the debatable behaviour of their virtuous relatives exposed. Raymond’s father Eldridge plans a transcontinental trip from his California vineyard to visit his son in Nova Scotia and sort him out, along with his preposterous claim to be harbouring ghosts. Eldridge tells his wife Angelina he is going, and replies for her too. Octave lies awake reflecting on his reincarnation. He is not necessarily pleased. The listener is advised that the flaw in the fabric caused by Hurricane Noel was no accident, and in fact was not nearly as serious as had been desired. Meanwhile Raymond and Octave and Angle over the breakfast table contemplate the slim odds of it being desirable to have cod for every meal. Raymond’s next-door neighbour little Shannon O’Keefe, keeping watch on the village from their turret with her father’s binoculars, sees Angle sneaking out of 11 Land’s End and decides he is a terrorist. Shannon and her mother Dawn confront Angle as he is putting off from shore in Raymond’s dinghy. Dawn is perplexed that a bearded man wearing a houserobe has apparently stolen Raymond’s dinghy. Shannon relates from her school teacher that terrorists are not to be understood but only shot. Elsewhere in the village, retired detective Gordon Daggon, descendant of Angle and Octave, is in his armchair on his dock. The listener is acquainted with all the many things for which Gordon is thankful, including hot rum toddies, a fishing boat, a younger wife, and seagulls. He is not thankful to be bothered by Dawn O’Keefe to go and catch a thief. | Oct 11, 2011 |
| PB-LostSouls-07 (24.2 MB) | Angle makes his way out to sea and encounters Victor Cooley in the fog. Victor corrects his fishing technique, starting with the fact that the cod he is looking to catch do not exist in the present. Gordon pursues the dinghy thief in his fishing boat Severence, expecting to find that it is Raymond after all and that Dawn O’Keefe just mistook him for someone else in the fog. Angle and Victor watch from Victor’s dory in the in-between as Gordon ponders Raymond’s anchored and vacated dinghy, in which Angle has left Raymond’s houserobe, and which is half full of water from Angle’s clumsy departure overboard. Victor strikes a hard bargain with Angle to guarantee a steady supply of monster cod for sale. In Halifax, Raymond the tour guide leads groups of skeletons through the historic Alexander Keith brewery. He encounters his wife Cat, who alone among the group is herself and not whitey bones. What she has to say to him is shocking in the extreme. On break Raymond relaxes by himself in Mr. Keith’s old basement sitting room. He finds a message on his cell phone from Gordon Daggon, who is checking on him after finding his empty dinghy anchored out at sea. He wonders what to do, about Gordon, about Cat, about Angle and Octave, about everything. He takes it all too much to heart. | Oct 11, 2011 |
| PB-LostSouls-08 (17.03 MB) | The successor disaster to Hurricane Noel is arriving, this time from the sun, with vivid and widespread consequences. Raymond in particular is struck by its unusual effects and awakes to find himself not Raymond anymore but sea captain Oliver Cole. In his new identity, he greets the wife and daughter who thought never to see him emerge from his coma. Once he sees his predicament, he agrees to relate an old tale to his daughter Amelie, one which she may not share with anyone. That's because it has to do with time travel, and previously this has gotten the captain into a world of trouble. | Oct 23, 2011 |
| PB-LostSouls-09 (32.1 MB) | Of Captain Cole's voyage to Calcutta and his adventures there, which include trading with a hashish-smoking merchant of cowhides, walking stoned in a crowd of festival-goers along the foul-smelling Houghly, meeting a mad miracle-working monk, and suffering two incredible twists of fate on his return to the near side of the world. | Oct 23, 2011 |
| PB-LostSouls-10 (21.71 MB) | The captain’s wife finds her invalid husband at the window, looking out and marvelling at being back in his own time, at being back with her. Meanwhile, back in the 21st century, Raymond Kidd’s wife Cat goes looking for him and can’t find him. She drives to 7 Land’s End to find it locked. Little Shannon O’Keefe watches from the turret of her house as Cat bashes in the door of 7 Land’s End with a stick of firewood. Shannon's mother, questioned about this, finds she can't explain the mystery of love. Cat meets Octave and is presented with irrefutable evidence that he is indeed what he says he is, hard as that is to believe. | Oct 23, 2011 |
| PB-LostSouls-11 (22.33 MB) | Over yet another meal of cod, Cat and the two brothers deliberate. Angle and Octave are concerned with how to survive in the 21st century. Cat cares only about finding Raymond and getting him back. They hatch a plan. The next morning, Angle ventures outside for the first time in 200 years, is transported with bliss at having done so, and then is strangely and disagreeably incorporated into a waterside wedding. His descendant Gordon Daggon, attracted to the wedding bagpipes, finds his ancestor in a brown study. Angle doesn't want to give away his identity. Gordon is determined to sleuth it out. | Oct 23, 2011 |
| PB-LostSouls-12 (23.41 MB) | Angle and Gordon, at sea to retrieve Raymond's dinghy, get into the rum. Afterwards, former detective Gordon drunkenly logs the astonishing result of his investigation, which is that the man he suspected of having murdered Raymond Kidd is actually an ancestor of his come back to life. Back at 7 Land's End, Octave rails at his debauched brother Angle for having given away their secret. It is now more imperative than ever that they bring Raymond Kidd back, only they have no idea how to go back in time to get him. The Simple appears out of nowhere as the answer. | Oct 23, 2011 |
| PB-LostSouls-13 (31.76 MB) | Angle Daggon meets his descendant, and Gordon Daggon meets his ancestor, over a bottle of overproof bootleg rum confiscated from a dead man. A drunken Gordon can hardly believe the results of his investigation. An equally drunken Angle is taken to task by his brother for having given away the secret of their being reincarnated spirits. At this point the Simple arrives, gathered from nowhere. She charms Cat. She recovers the emptiness bell. More naked than the day she was born, she begins the process of recovering Raymond from the past. | Oct 23, 2011 |
| PB-LostSouls-14 (20.03 MB) | Captain Cole's oldest friend, Francis Stegman, offers Cole the captaincy of his new steamship Great Northern, the largest ship in the world, in hopes of restoring his friend's wealth and stability of mind. Not only that, he extends an offer of partnership. Captain Cole's wife Josephine is almost in tears at this unexpected good fortune. Cole, however, dismays them both by not immediately accepting. He hears voices summoning him back to the future. He asks for silence as he steers them in the ship's pinnace to their picnic at Point Pleasant, and promises to reveal his mind to them there, around a bonfire in the snow. | Oct 23, 2011 |
| PB-Lost Souls-15 (18.72 MB) | The struggle is on. For Cat, Angle and Octave, Gordon Daggon and Raymond Kidd's father Eldridge, the struggle is to call Raymond back to the present from the past where he is Captain Oliver Cole. For Captain Cole's wife Josephine and daughter Amelie, and childhood friend the Nova Scotian shipping magnate Francis Stegman, the struggle is to set the unfortunate captain back on his feet in business in the eighteenth century, their time, so he will want to stay there. All the Captain wants is the truth. All he gets is another illusion. What he does is disappear. | Nov 7, 2011 |
| PB-LostSouls-16 (22.43 MB) | People tend to think, based on the very ignorant accounts that are all they have access to, that travelling in time is a simple and straightforward affair. Nothing could be further from the truth. In Episode 16 of The Flaw in the Fabric, Book 1 of A Travellers Guide for Lost Souls, a much more informed account emerges. When Captain Oliver Cole steps out of the nineteenth century, and his life with his wife Josephine and daughter Amelie, he does not immediately cross over to his other life as Raymond Kidd in the twenty-first century. On the way he is waylaid by a surreal experience in a cave, where as a dwarf attendant he is commanded to marry a young prince and princess who just happen to be brother and sister. Does it all make any sense? Raymond Kidd's estranged wife Cat asks herself that question as she sits on a spring morning at her sewing machine at 7 Land's End, several month's after Raymond's disappearance. For an answer all she gets is the song of a mourning dove on a telephone wire by the sea outside the open window. | Nov 14, 2011 |
| PB-LostSouls-17 (20.22 MB) | The news of Raymond's return from another life makes waves. Gordon Daggon staggers out of his house in spite of an awful cold to tell Cat. On a warm summer morning after an intolerable winter missing her husband, Cat gets the good news from Gordon while she is out on the dock drinking coffee, yet is so overwhelmed that she neither thanks him nor follows up his news. It takes an hour of meditation for her to remember that love is all, not her agonizing memories. | Nov 22, 2011 |
| PB-LostSouls-18 (16.81 MB) | How can one man please two wives who don't exist at the same time. How can one man be two men? While twenty-first century wife Cat McCallum drives with her stuffed bunny to retrieve from the police station her long-lost husband Raymond Kidd, who has re-appeared out of the sea, nineteenth-century wife Josephine Cole attends with her daughter Amelie a mock funeral with an empty casket that purportedly contains her husband Captain Oliver Cole, who has disappeared into the sea. The newspapers of both times are hot for the stories - miracles always sell papers. To get the inside story, listen to the eighteenth episode of The Flaw in the Fabric, Book One of A Travellers Guide for Lost Souls. | Nov 30, 2011 |
| PB-LostSouls-19 (20.7 MB) | Cat McCallum wants an ordinary life again, but her long-lost husband doesn't remember her. After he does he keeps switching from being her happily returned husband to one grievously separated from the wife and daughter of a former lifetime. A TV news reporter wants to tell the story of his time travelling. There is also a demon who objects to his return. In Episode 19 of the Flaw in the Fabric, it begins to look like ordinary is a long long way away. | Dec 11, 2011 |