A Place of timeless harmony

Named to Kirkus Review’s Best Books

A Best Indie Debut Novel of 2018

Finalist in the 2018 Next Generation Indie Book Awards
Winner of the 2016 Clay Reynolds Novella Prize


A Place of Timeless Harmony is fresh and surprising, and in places rises to a critical mass in its descriptive power.


Clay Reynolds

A NOVEL BY CURT ERIKSEN

A PLACE OF TIMELESS Harmony

When Richard Delmore and Sofie Cerruti decide to escape the confines of their affair in the Twin Cities, they choose the white sands of Zanzibar and the verdant slopes of the outer lip of the Ngorongoro Crater as their romantic and illicit getaway destination. It’s a temporary paradise they’re after, a reprieve from the limitations of the life of deception they lead in the States.

But once they begin their safari through the Serengeti the two lovers become spiritually lost in the teeming yet inhospitable plains of East Africa, where they are forced not only to deal with the consequences of the truths they have kept from each other—the deeper and darker secrets that are painfully worked out allegorically through the events that surround them—but to observe the contrast between their ‘civilized’ and sophisticated lives in Minnesota, and the primitive and sometimes primordial world they have entered.

ABOUT THE NOVEL

What others said

Kirkus Review

Slender but rich, Eriksen’s Hemingway-esque tale revolves around a delicate dissection of a fraying relationship, writhing with unspoken regret and artful noncommunication, whose real stakes are illuminated by the juxtaposition with primal scenes of life and death.
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/curt-eriksen/place-timeless-harmony/

The Book Review Directory

Secrecy, love, and uncertainty fill the pages of this short but rich novel. Its emotional characters, vibrant imagery, and profound themes leave readers remembering that sometimes love just isn’t enough to overcome the emptiness that resides within. Readers of A Place of Timeless Harmony will question their own struggles to come to terms with the “should’ve, could’ve, would’ve” feelings in their lives and understand that what happens in the dark will eventually come to light.
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/curt-eriksen/place-timeless-harmony/

Necessary Fiction

In the short span of a novella A Place of Timeless Harmony peels back the layered vulnerabilities and illusions of a couple on an illicit getaway to the hostile Serengeti wilderness. An intimate and marvelously detailed work by Curt Eriksen…this novella–the story of this particular man and this particular woman–makes for a fascinating read.
https://necessaryfiction.com/reviews/APlaceofTimelessHarmonybyCurtEriksen

The story behind the story

In 2015 Curt Eriksen took his three kids to Tanzania with the idea of writing a piece of non-fiction based upon this once-in-a-lifetime family trip.  Instead he produced a story that won the 2016 Clay Reynolds Novella Prize.

  • The word Serengeti means ‘endless plains’
  • During the dry season the wildlife is drawn to the campsite at night by the scent of the water used for cooking and cleaning.
  • Although phylogenetically closer to felines, hyenas are behaviorally and morphologically more similar to canines.
  • Hyenas will eat anything, including stinky socks and shoes.
  • Despite their respective reputations, lions are more likely to scavenge from hyenas than the other way around.
  • And unlike lions, which usually kill their prey before eating them, hyenas devour the animals they hunt while still alive.