Until You've Met Fredrick Garvey Dubois

Four thousand years is a long time to be alive, but Fredrick Garvey DuBois has been around for all of them. His story begins in an unassuming village on the Nile, back when there were no history books or countries or even calendars to mark the passing of days. Since then, he has seen it all: kingdoms that have come up from the dust and gone back to it, the making of religions, wars and revolutions. He has been a slave and crossed oceans in chains. He has put to rest every person he has ever cared for - his parents, his lovers, his siblings, his friends. Time and again, he has had to stay behind while the world went on without him.

You would think immortality was some kind of blessing. Fred would tell you otherwise. It is the burden of waking to four millennia of memories. It is seeing the faces of those around you fade while your own stays the same. You learn, eventually, that loss will catch you off guard no matter how much time you have. After so many centuries of it, he has become an expert at keeping his distance, at not letting on. He survives, sure, but he doesn't really live.

That was the way of things until a mundane morning on a park bench turned his world upside down with a few words. Lately, he has been running into strangers who are in pieces: a doctor mourning his wife, a girl putting her own ambitions on hold to look after her sister in the wake of tragedy, a teen trying to put her life back together after something unspeakable. As they cross his path, Fred finds himself falling into old habits, showing them the way back to hope. But in tending to them, he feels the fortifications of his heart starting to give way.

With new ties being made and old ones reopening, he can no longer put off the question he has sidestepped for four thousand years: What is the point of an existence that has no end if you have to endure it by yourself?

However, meeting Amanda changes the direction of his journey. Her presence allows Fred to begin a new way of living. As the bond between Fred and Amanda grows into a deep affection, Fred begins to visualize a future and a sense of permanence with her. This hope for a home is felt by Fred for the first time because of the human connection he has found. However, certain secrets exist longer than the history of the world. It is claimed that history cannot hide every mystery from the sight of people. Fred's immortality shows itself in new ways just as he believes that a time of peace has finally arrived, changing the narrative of his life.

Heartwarming and heartbreaking, Fredrick Garvey DuBois is a story about love, hope, compassion, second chances, and the extraordinary power of being seen. Even in a world full of grief and suffering, hope can still be found in the smallest acts of kindness, and that sometimes the people who save others are the ones most desperately in need of saving themselves.