Our Time

Summer days spent pretending to be our favorite super hero, riding bikes downhill with arms held out to the side and running down the street with a gang of friends thinking of only the next big adventure; childhood is remembered by most of us as being a time of innocent adventure and growing into the person we dream of becoming one day. Childhood, to each of us and in a different way, is our time.

Gerald M. Dougherty’s new novel, "Our Time," joins Jeri on a nostalgic trip back home to Pleasant Dale, Pennsylvania where his mind’s eye reflects on the childhood adventures and lessons that helped shape him into the man he is today. Written in a stream of consciousness style, readers view the world through the eyes of a child participating in imaginary games, innocent trouble making and many trips to confession at the local Catholic Church. Gerald Dougherty describes small town America where family, friends, the Catholic Church and community worked, lived and cared for one another. Not just a coming of age story, Dougherty writes with honesty and clarity, appealing to many adult senses of what being a child really meant: freedom, respect for our parents, innocent misadventure and developing ideologies that would help us grow into the adult we wished to become.

In addition to having served in United States Marine Corps Reserves for six years, Gerald Dougherty graduated from the University of Scranton in Scranton, Pennsylvania. According to the author he has worked "on a garbage truck, dug ditches, worked around the mines with my father, stripped mine motors for scrap metal, worked at an amusement park, worked in warehouses, worked in a dress factory, drove a truck for a lumber company, tended bar, did maintenance work at a country club, parked cars, washed dishes …[and] worked for a summer as a lumberjack." Dougherty currently teaches Social Studies at York Catholic High School. An avid backpacker, Gerald Dougherty has led students on adventures in the western part of the country along with taking trips through the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park and trekking along the Appalachian Trail. He has based "Our Time" on his many adventures as a child and an adult.