On November 7, Dr. Cicero novelists Carey Harrison and Ashley Mayne joined to launch Ashley Mayne’s novel, Tiger, each alternately reading sections from the book. Harrison also read a short passage from Mayne’s debut novel, Mankiller, and at the request of poet Robert Kelly, whose instigation led Dr.Cicero Books to Ashley Mayne’s talent, Mayne herself read a further section from Mankiller.
Tiger takes the reader into darker places than the already passion-driven world of Mankiller, and, after the vivid Texas landscape of the first novel, leads the reader across a wide panorama from the Mediterranean to New York City, north to New England and south to Mexico, and across the seas to India. This time the passion is between a Jesuit priest and his young lover, who is ready to give everything, while the priest himself is torn between human love and his chaste spiritual calling. The novel takes the reader deeply into both the devotional and the physical, both of which, in this story, are encapsulated in the great tiger, Dakshin Rai of the Indian forest.