Tecopa Cocoa

Tecopa Cocoa is a fanciful, realistic, funny, insightful, scholarly and uniquely optimistic coming of age tale. It starts with our hero sharing his early memories as a geeky kid trying his best to grow up in the eastern United States during the 1950s, anno Domini. His commercial pilot father was a real-live hero during WWII — a fellow born to "pull people from the drink." His quirky-cum-crazy mother only adds to the boy's bewilderment. During his fifteenth summer, his dad sends him west to visit his eccentric Uncle Henry, in the tiny Mojave Desert town of Tecopa. There he finds home amongst a ragtag crew of mind readers. It's also where he undergoes a bizarre metamorphosis. The narrator's observations about the people and world around him are alternately hilarious and tragic, but always ring true. His is the story of innocence lost and found, of humanity's propensity toward self-destruction juxtaposed with a colossal capacity for love, of mindless evil set against absolute good. This book is bound to appeal to readers who like sinking their teeth into meaty, complex sentences generously peppered with literary and historic references. But it's also for any self-respecting baby boomer who remembers Saturday afternoon matinee movies at the local theater, behemoth automobiles, disturbingly vivid colors, unrequited crushes on the cutest (usually unattainable) kid in class, and feeling different and isolated. The story parallels American history, delves into the future, and occasionally directs it. Or is it that trickster, Fate, calling the shots? The reader has to judge; the narrator's not saying. And the author only offers intriguing options. When you reach the last page, you will be sorry that it's over. I was, because I came to care so much about all the zany yet very real characters.