Anthony Triolo

Lallome Anthony Triolo

In a world where the rivers, birds, animals and trees are imbued with sentience and intelligence, capable of speech, a lone human child must free the river that animates existence. Lallome is a story of a young boy who embarks on a fantastical journey to save his homeland. In the process he discovers the true essence of himself, humanity and the natural world around him. The two tricksters, Coyote and Raven, aid the child on his journey to the human world and fill the story with light-hearted banter and surprise laughs. During his quest the child is repeatedly challenged by opposing forces that attempt to destroy him, imprison him or otherwise prevent him from breaking down the walls, both metaphorical and literal, that separate humanity from the animal world, that separate the domesticated from the wild. Rife with symbolism, metaphors, transformations and a dreamlike consciousness, the river itself is an allegory of the eternal human struggle between control and creativity, between taming the wild and unleashing it. Overall the story asks the reader to reimagine the world around them especially the non-human world. The author's writing has been influenced by the Deep Ecology philosophical movement and largely been shaped by philosophers, scientists and poets such as Arne Naess, E. O. Wilson, Gary Snyder, Jack Turner and Terry Tempest Williams, to name a few. But in this particular case, Lallome is mostly inspired by the philosophical ideas of Paul Shepherd. It is an attempt to make them accessible to a younger audience in a fantastical way.