A Novel · Forthcoming
The Last Evening
A dog watches a marriage come apart and back together across the years she holds them — until the night the family realizes, too late, that she was the structural beam.
The Book
Told in close-third through the consciousness of a Siberian husky named Theia, this novella spans the years of a marriage — its silences, its fractures, its tenderness — as witnessed by the creature who knows them best.
Theia cannot explain what she senses. She can only be there. And being there, it turns out, is everything.
“In memory of Theia and Watson.
The stories are not true.
The dogs were.”
First Lines
Chapter One — The hour the light goes brown
She knew the word evening before she knew it was a word. It came when the light along the floor turned the color of tea, when the man set his book down without marking the page, when the woman in the kitchen stopped moving and stood still as if listening to something inside the house. Theia would rise then. She would walk to the door and wait. Not for anything in particular. For the next thing.
Next
The River House
A Novel in Three Parts
A son visits his father for dinner every second Wednesday of the month. He has done so for fifteen years. A novel about what passes between two people across a lifetime of silence.
In progress · 2027
Verse
Wherever You Are
We lived far apart once,
two lives separated by miles,
two hearts learning each other
through waiting, hope, and time.
Then slowly, somehow,
the distance became smaller.
Your voice became my morning,
your name became my peace.
Life with you became beautiful,
not because it was easy,
but because even the hard days
felt worth carrying with you.
And now, when things are heavy,
when the world feels uncertain,
I still know one thing clearly:
I do not need the perfect place.
I do not need the perfect sky.
I do not need the easy road.
Wherever you are,
that is where my heart goes.
Wherever you stand,
that is where home begins.
And if life asks me
where I want to be,
my answer will always be simple:
With you.
Near you.
Beside you.
Because the place is not the place.
The place is you.
— Ben Arlen
About
Ben Arlen is a debut author. THEIA: The Last Evening is his first book.
It is dedicated in memory of two dogs who were, in every sense that mattered, real.