Geoffrey Leavenworth

Isle of Misfortune
When Gordon O’Connor answers the doorbell one night while he is home alone with his sons, he encounters an angry man who shoots him in the chest. Fortunately, he escapes serious injury, but the gunshot begins a chain of events that alters the course of his life forever.

Once the police and emergency medical crew depart, Gordo, his wife, and their two young boys flee Galveston Island. None of them realizes that they will never again sleep in Pilot House, the graceful Victorian home that they love. Theirs is a saga of an ordinary family caught in a web of violence and suspicion.

Gordo, a free-lance writer, is married to Ana, an attorney and the daughter of a prominent lawyer and former prosecutor who closed down Galveston’s rampant gambling and vice rackets three and a half decades earlier. The couple has built a genteel life in the Oleander City. Sons Jake and Sam attend private schools, the family is active in the community, life is good.

As they try to regain control of their lives, a beach house on the island’s far West End becomes a temporary refuge. Gordo discovers that the physical trauma of the shooting is nothing compared to its emotional aftermath. He is conscious of every curious sound, suspicious of strangers, and reluctantly begins to carry is father’s sleek Beretta .380.

Meanwhile, the police are oddly disinterested in the case, implying that Gordo may know more than he reveals about the shooter and his motivation. Gordon wonders if a bad cop from his past might be a factor, or could it have something to do with Ana’s father? In any event, Gordo and Ana realize that they are on their own. They are passionately attached to each other, but as they watch their once idyllic world come apart, each faces sexual temptation.

Disturbing phone calls in the middle of the night, an intrusion at Pilot House, and another encounter with the stalker shatter their illusion of safety once more.

Gordo moves his family to the Texas Hill Country, and even that is not far enough away. Isle of Misfortune reaches a gripping conclusion when the stalker confronts Gordo for the last time.

This is a novel about a family on the run, with characters who are real and likeable. The boys are innocently charming; Gordo and Ana’s marriage is rich in complexity; and they are surrounded by an intriguing cast of friends who have strayed onto the tiny barrier island. The novel’s tension spirals as Gordon O’Connor grapples with the need to protect his family, his raw emotional response to the violence, and a craving to understand the behavior of the assailant and the police.

This stylish thriller is a contemporary story in the tradition of Cape Fear.

Geoffrey Leavenworth knows violence firsthand. In 1994 he was shot at his home by an unknown stalker. The case was never solved.

ISBN 0-87565-269-7
TCU Press
308 pp.
Fiction
April, 2003

Historic Galveston
Richard Payne and Geoffrey Leavenworth present an unprecedented examination of the barrier island that Spanish surveyors named in honor of Bernardo de Galvez half a century before Houston was founded 50 miles north on the Texas mainland.

Historic Galveston reveals the stunningly beautiful evidence of an era when Galveston's grip on Texas trade fostered extraordinary wealth; when its population included immigrants, it seems, from almost every nation; and when more privileged Galvestonians combed the world for rich materials and furnishings for their offices and their homes -- some of which might accurately be called palaces.

These Victorian homes and buildings have survived periods of immense prosperity, the island's occupation by enemy forces, fires, economic malaise, neglect and storms of devastating power, including the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.

Their presence is a testimony not only to the strength of their structures, but also to the vision and determination of this tiny islands citizenry. Moreover, they illustrate why today Galveston is viewed as a city with a wondrous history and an array of special charms.

Excerpt from The Houston Chronicle, November 24, 1985:

"Sometimes a book makes visible what may otherwise remain unseen. Such is the triumph of Historic Galveston. Richard Payne's exquisite single and double-page images in vibrant color isolate sections of such landmarks as the Bishop's Palace, Ashton Villa and the Garden Verein Pavilion, and in doing so, make us conscious of the intricacies of design, fine craftsmanship and sheer whimsy that is often lost in the magnitude of the structure.

The pictures alone would be sufficient to delight the viewer, but Geoffrey Leavenworth's fluid narrative of the barrier island's social, economic and architectural history enhances our understanding of what their beauty is all about."

(Available through the Galveston Historical Foundation)
10.5" x 15"
Cloth cover/ dust jacket
First printing 15,000 (1985)
ISBN 0-917001-02-8
Retail: $35 (originally $49.95)
Photographs by Richard Payne
Text by Geoffrey Leavenworth
Herring Press