Life's Big Zoo

I’m halfway to thirteen and 1968 is already the craziest year ever. Rigged elections, H-bombs, riots, rock and roll. My rock star brother might end up in Vietnam and The Monkees TV show just got cancelled. So much for flower power. Should I tell my grandmother that our weird neighbor is an ex-Nazi? Nana survived Dachau and deserves a quiet life which, so far, I haven’t provided. I may be the dumbest kid in smart class, but I have a really big idea: I’m going to return to the scene of the crime and avenge Nana’s lost family. Garage bands, G-men, Germans and Jews. Laurel Canyon, where the nuts roll uphill. If the future of the free world depends on me, please accept my apology in advance. Among the many wise things Nana tells me, one that rings true time and again is that God keeps a big zoo. In the summer of 1968 I joined the menagerie

R.S. Gompertz grew up in Los Angeles, California in what seemed like a suburb of Disneyland. As the son of a refugee from Nazi Germany, his childhood unfolded at the intersection of the bright lights of the sixties and the long, dark shadow of the Holocaust. These are the main ingredients in his most recent novel, a catcher in the rye bread coming of age story titled "Life's Big Zoo." He is the author of humorous historical novels, "No Roads Lead to Rome" and "Aqueduct to Nowhere," as well as a memoir, "The Expat's Pajamas: Barcelona."