Elijah Bruce Monroe's Redemption

Monroe's Redemption

Elijah Bruce

Boolana Collective Press, May 2005, $9.99, 144 pp.

ISBN: 1411621913

In Manhattan, Monroe Goolynabura is a confident rookie with only one formal year of chef experience at a top restaurant Caf Pacifica. Heeding the words of his mother, his culinary school teacher, the media dubbing him a future superstar and encouraged by his wife, Monroe enters the annual Union Square Fair cook-out expecting to win the "Best Chef of the Entire World" award. However, the wild boar kebab he prepared included contaminated meat with over two-hundred participants suffering food poisoning and nine dying.

Though legally, Monroe got off relatively soft, his reputation was destroyed. His boss blames him for the restaurant's decline and radically reduces his salary. His wife blames him for their lifestyle's decline starting with the forced move from Soho to Astoria accompanied by their sweet daughter. Monroe blames his failure on those who sell bad meat and knows his chef status died with those who ate his dish. However Monroe gets a second chance at the Union Square Fair, but seeks the perfect lamb for his dish which he finds when he hears her say "Mr. Goolynabura".

MONROE'S REDEMPTIONS is an extremely dark tale that showcases how obsession can destroy a shining light and take others down too. The key support cast is purposely flat, allegorically antagonistic and avaricious at a time when Monroe needs help to stop his free fall into hell's kitchen. Surprisingly Monroe is a sympathetic character whose obsession makes Lady Macbeth seems as if she had no ambition. Elijah Bruce paints a world that constantly beats the message of success using any means is all that matters because the victors rewrite the methods they employed to succeed.

Harriet Klausner