We will have a giveaway of Latitudes tomorrow,
but enjoy a guest post from its author Anthony Caplan today!
About Latitudes: A Story of Coming Home: of one boy overcoming dysfuntion, dislocation and distance…
When Father and Mother, a highflying young American lawyer and his party-hard bride,
fall prey to the self-destructive lure of alcohol and sexual liberation, Will and his sisters
pay the price in divorce and kidnappings that take them back and forth between the rain
forest hideaways of coastal Latin America and the placid suburbs of Long Island. Will
identifies with the oppressed workers laboring in his father’s fast food restaurant and
longs for American freedom. Father remarries the daughter of a local aristocrat, and Will
is sent off to the hothouse world of a New England boarding school.
Swimming in a sea of Fair Isle sweaters and LL Bean boots, Will discovers a core of
resilience in himself that allows him to survive, thrive, and ultimately embrace the flawed
and varied worlds he inhabits. Will reconnects with his Mother, sinking into a New York
City world of Irish bars and one night stands he cannot save her from. With a little help
from friends, and a high school Shakespeare class taught by the school’s closeted gay
athletic trainer, Will begins to see the possibility of finding his true path. Latitudes charts
the birth pangs of a quest for self and soul — from a tropical childhood to a coming of
age on the road.
I wrote the first draft of Latitudes: A Story of Coming Home as a first person account
of my own childhood, a straight memoir, while commuting to and from work two years
ago. I had an MP3 player that could record and I dictated into it, and then would come
home and transcribe at night. I did this for a year, and then when I sat down to edit that
summer, realized that it would work much better as a third person story, so I basically
rewrote the whole thing from scratch in three months. It came very easily.
There was no research needed, as I knew the story in a very deep way. The interesting
thing is the little touches the story needed to actually make the character and the settings
come alive. Telling it in the third person as a novel gave me the freedom to invent and
not feel that I needed to be accurate as far as what people said or where things took
place and in what chronological order. People have asked me what it was like to dredge
up ancient family history and memories that had been long buried. It was painful, but
liberating. I knew that telling this story would be good for me and for a lot of people.
Now that it is out there I have no regrets and believe it stands up pretty well as an account of a strange and sometimes alienating childhood, but one that was rich at the same time in unusual experiences that have marked me for life as a searcher.
You can purchase the book in kindle or book format at Amazon.
About the Author:
Anthony Caplan is an independent writer, teacher and homesteader in northern New
England. He has worked at various times as a shrimp fisherman, environmental activist,
journalist, taxi-driver, builder, window-washer, and telemarketer. Currently, Caplan is
working on restoring a 150 year old farmstead where he and his family tend sheep and
chickens, grow most of their own vegetables, and have started a small apple orchard from
scratch. Read more on the author's website.
Comments
Post a Comment