As a playwright, his play “Stillwater” presented at the Venus/Adonis Theater Festival in New York City in 2016.
Richards applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, We Are Only Ghosts, and reported the following:
From page 69:Visit Jeffrey L. Richards's website.Eventually, the soldiers come to know him as another resident and stop checking his papers, leaving him free to explore the cobblestoned streets as any other German. He nods to the men and women who recognize him from the konditorei or whom he passes with frequency in his wanderings. They are generous with returned nods and a friendly “Guten Tag” or a routine “Heil Hitler,” which Charles returns. Soon, Charles determines ruefully that Germans are very nice, as long as you are one of them.So, does page 69 of We Are Only Ghosts give a reader a “good idea” of the larger work? I would have to say no. Of course, the reader will see we’re set in Bayreuth, Germany and from the use of “Heil Hitler” as a greeting, along with the presence of soldiers, we know we’re in the midst of WWII, but since the novel spans a timeframe from mid-30s Czechoslovakia, when the Nazis invade the Sudetenland where Charles and his family live, to 1968 New York City when Charles and Berthold unexpectedly meet once again, this page represents but a small moment in the grand scheme of the story. True, the reader will get a sense of the danger that permeates the novel and will also get a glimpse of the sense of unbelonging that plagues Charles throughout his life, the novel, the story, and Charles’s life is much more brutal and unflinching and, frankly, more traumatic than this somewhat serene scene suggests. I would think anyone who read only this page might expect the atmosphere and tone of it to be carried throughout the book and they would be more than a bit shocked at the darker tone to come.
While he explores every street and alley and nook and cranny of the small town, Charles most often finds his way to the Hofgarten by the New Palace. Despite the war raging beyond its borders, Bayreuth has maintained the gardens, ensuring they remain pristine yet natural, as if touched only by the hands of God. Charles wanders the meticulous grounds, winding along the maze of paths amongst the flower beds, dormant in the winter, the sculpted bushes and trees along the canal, and the various statues, which appear out of nowhere, as if ghosts. But no matter the path he might take, he always ends at the gazebo. A sense of security fills him as he sits beneath the gazebo’s bright azure-blue dome. Snow-white columns – gilded at the top with brilliant gold – support the grand canopy. On occasion, when he feels most secure, happy even, he wonders about Berthold and the Werden family. He wonders where they ended up. He wonders if they were captured or if they made their escape as planned. Each time he is unsure which scenario he wishes to be true. He wonders about his own fate – what will become of him when he is discovered? – for he knows it is only a matter of time? While he likes Frau Hueber and Elsbeth, possibly loves them as he would his own family, and the life he is creating in Bayreuth, he knows he cannot stay. Every day in Bayreuth, in Germany, is a risk.
For more context, the novel starts in 1968 New York City when Charles, the headwaiter in a small café, realizes one of the customers is Berthold Werden, the Nazi officer who took Charles out of Auschwitz when he was 17 years old to work in the Werden home and also forces Charles into a sexual relationship. The novel unfolds via a uniquely structured dual timeline that reveals Charles’s harrowing life at the hands of the Nazis as he and his family move through the concentration camps of Eastern Europe. When Charles and Berthold meet again in 1968, both living fabricated lives, Charles finds himself once again entangled in Berthold’s world. He soon becomes torn between an ill-placed sense of loyalty to the man who saved him from certain death in Auschwitz and revenge for the man who destroyed his life in the first place.
--Marshal Zeringue
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