12 Winters Blog

Weeping with an Ancient God
A Novella
by Ted Morrissey

Ted Morrissey’s Weeping with an Ancient God is a fictional revision of Herman Melville’s own telling of his time spent amongst cannibals. The story begins with Melville and his friend Toby trapped on an island, unable to speak the native language, and unaware of what exactly the cannibals want from them. They over time try to devise a plan to escape.

Morrissey does a great job at the beginning with establishing the isolation of the main character. Immediately the reader is introduced to heavy sensory detail as Melville awakens to darkness and heat, pain throbbing in his leg, remembering whom he now lives among. This tone of darkness is carried throughout, with only small dollops of light. The darkness is found not just amongst Melville’s relationships with the cannibals, or his entrapment on the island, but within his own mind…