In my new novel, What’s Left, she’s grown up taking much of her family and its restaurant enterprise for granted. After all, every kid in her extended close-knit family has had to work shifts there. After the death of her father – her Baba – when she’s 11, she uncovers what had attracted him to the home she’s known.
Early on, his input into the expansion of the restaurant must have felt invigorating. Beyond its pure financial calculations came some intense consideration of spiritual values, growing culinary awareness, and out-and-out-sensory delight. Could you put these together as an artistic experience? That kind of thinking.
What, me as a Mixmaster? Just look at the topics percolating in my novel What’s Left.
Here are ten.
Questions of personal identity. For Cassia, this moves from a desire to fit in with what she considers normal for her peers and classmates and turns into something more solitary Goth before she hits stride as a rock concert manager.
Questions of just what, exactly, identifies a family. Hers has its landmark restaurant as well as a circle of close cousins and siblings she calls the Squad. But she’s still missing her dad.
Greek-American experience. She grows up in her mother’s extended family, the fourth generation after two brothers and their spouses, two sisters, arrived in Indiana from Greece. It’s a colorful tradition.
Family owned-and-operated business. Their landmark restaurant means the kids learn to work early, and their parents often have to miss big events at school or sporting events. It also presents uniquely troubling aspects when company clashes erupt or a member dies and inheritance taxes are due.
Guerrilla economix. Her uncle Dimitri advocates a community of small-is-beautiful economics using the restaurant as its base. Seeing himself as a socialist capitalist, he champions generous worker benefits, funding worthwhile startups, and creating considerate rental housing.
In this family, even its initial hot dog joint adds distinctive touches. When they acquire burger-and-fries Carmichaels’, they look for local sources to give them an edge, especially in their daily soups and specials. And then when they branch out into upscale and vegetarian lines, the thinking turns especially creative.
Bohemian life. There’s Gypsy, from one direction, and hippie, from another. And Cassia’s aunt Pia, so full of kefi, makes the most of it.
Keys to success. Cassia soon realizes the ideal of the self-made man is an illusion. Her family is a model of working together, even mentoring. Her father’s fame would have never come about without their support.
The Dharma. Members of her family, especially her father, take up Tibetan Buddhist practice before she comes on the scene. It gives her a dual outlook on religion and spirituality.
Emotional loss and recovery. Cassia loses her father to a mountaineering accident when she’s 11, setting her on a course to recover whatever she can of him. But ultimately everyone in her family suffers a deep personal loss, and how each of them addresses it leads either to bitter despair or else emotional growth and wisdom. Guidance often appears in the most unexpected times and places.
Adapting to a Healthy Heart diet, which greatly limits my old fallback choices of cheese, eggs (with the yolks), and butter, has led to another shift in what I’m eating.
My carbohydrate intake has spiked. It’s bad news if I start to show indications of diabetes.
At least I don’t have to watch my salt levels, for now. That could be another whammy.
But I have decided that if I’m ever given a terminal prognosis, I’m going to go out with a bang. Load up on all that’s been curtailed, maybe start the day with bourbon or bubbly, that sort of thing.
Oh, who am I kidding. By then, I’ll probably have lost my taste for it all. Oh, shucky darn, right?
Among her mother’s male ancestors in my new novel, What’s Left, my personal favorite is clearly Ilias the Cypriot, even if I might hope to be less obvious in my telling. Ari, Perry, and Stavros all have their better qualities, but I doubt I’d get along with any of them for long. There are reasons, though, that Ilias is also known as the Philosopher, even when he’s become a successful construction contractor in Chicago before he and his wife relocate in what they erroneously assume will be semi-retirement.
He’s gentle, curious, generous, and instills in grandson Dimitri and granddaughter Nita, at least, qualities they ride to success in their own fields.
If only he’d been present to comfort Cassia in her grief after her father vanishes in an avalanche halfway around the globe – we would have had a different novel. Is there a point where the elderly are simply too weak to lend comfort or guidance, even when they’re still breathing? In the novel, unlike some of the more dramatic deaths, Ilias and Maria simply fade into a past. I imagine them going off arm in arm, smiling, but leave that to the reader’s discretion.
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Think of the circles around you. Who do you look to as your favorite male authority figure?
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A large Queen Anne-style house with a distinctive witch’s hat tower something like this is the headquarters for Cassia’s extended family in my new novel, What’s Left. If only this one were pink, like hers. (Manchester, New Hampshire.)
Some of these no longer exist, other than in my memory. And while some are expensive, others are quite the affordable but deserve kudos for skillful preparation and good ingredients.
Big Night, Dover. Anything Chris and Linda did here or in their later incarnations in South Berwick, Maine, was always masterful, often with a French or Mediterranean base. Small-scale, as in a two-person operation, can truly be beautiful. They’re the standard by which we now measure all others.
Fore Street, Portland, Maine. On a larger scale and an industrial style room, this is simply great food. We had a sauvignon blanc that was delivered with very little markup from retail simply because the owners thought this would be perfect for our meals – and we’re still searching for another bottle that comes close. My wife will rattle off the details of our meal and why we were so thoroughly impressed.
North, Providence, Rhode Island. Another small setting – 18 seats, plus a small bar – this Asian fusion laboratory was a revelation with tastes I didn’t know even existed.
Gasperetti’s, Yakima, Washington. A small setting – about 48 seats at the time – this was considered by many to be the best Italian restaurant in the Pacific Northwest when we lived there.
A tiny Japanese restaurant near Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. Four tables, as I recall on my first and only visit to the city. My introduction to raw fish (shashimi), sake, and plum wine. Heavenly.
PB Boulangerie, Wellfleet, Cape Cod. Wonderful French with a chef proprietor from Lyons.
Little Saigon, Worcester, Massachusetts. I love Vietnamese, and this one most of all.
Lobster in the Rough, York, Maine. Many fine Sunday afternoons here with a cover duo and families playing bocce. They knew how to make fine onion rings and French fries, in addition to haddock and lobster. And don’t overlook the slaw. Straight-forward fare like this can be a tough test for many restaurants. We really admire the ones that pass with flying colors.
Wonderland Café, Watertown, Massachusetts. Unpretentious Chinese cuisine that demonstrated the importance of fresh ingredients. This was takeout that was welcome a two-hour drive away a day later. ’Nuff said?
Ta-boo, Palm Beach, Florida. My first truly upscale restaurant experience, thanks to my girlfriend’s parents. Had my first raw oysters and first orange flambe while being entertained by a Yale glee club. After that, everything’s a delirious swirl.
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So how about your favorites? And what makes them stand out?
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A Corinthian column on the exterior of the Bradford Congregational Church in Haverhill, Massachusetts, is a classic touch. The screening is to keep birds at bay.
Of course, this is totally unrelated to the theme. Just another thing on my mind.
Considering his love of mountains, I am surprised that I didn’t have Kenzie heading off on mountainous trails on more of his days off work. He was certainly living close enough, if he wanted to drive a few hours each way.
Instead, it’s swimming at the secluded lake those two summers as well as riding the underground rails of Gotham one weekend of each month.
Sometimes, then, what happens all depends on the people you’re with or are meeting.
That’s how it worked for me, in a situation similar to Pit-a-Pat High Jinks.
Maybe Kenzie just thought he’d get the mountaintop opportunities later? Or maybe just not quite where he planned?
Admittedly, in my new novel, What’s Left, her family has a lot of good luck – accompanied by enough bad things for balance.
In the early drafts, I liked the fairy-tale, larger-than-life tone – as befits the “best movie ever” or “best novel ever” lists of upwards of ten thousands of listings that I hear from younger voices around me. Still, I’m a bit too Aristotelian to allow more than one as the best of anything, and I’m not referring to Cassia’s great-grandfather Ari here, either.
No, I’m thinking of the fact she’s in a close-knit extended family that’s prospered. In this case we have three brothers who’ve worked tightly together. A more common example in today’s society would be the three brothers who will never again speak to each other after their mother’s estate is settled. And that’s before we get to their children, the cousins who barely know each other, unlike Cassia’s.
There’s her aunt Nita, who’s negotiated a contract to assure she owns her daily newspaper column.
The adults who’ve joined in the family get along well together, something that’s never a given.
And Cassia herself lays claim to a rare happy childhood, up to the point when tragedy strikes when she’s 11.
I never intended this optimism when starting out on this work – it’s just where the narrative wanted to go. If the novel originated, as I think it did, in revisiting the aspirations of the hippie experience, what follows fits well as a foil to directions American society has since taken.
By the way, I do love fairy tales, especially in their more ominous, early, unrefined versions. The kind where Rapunzel’s pregnant or Cinderella’s stepsisters lose their feet.
There are a few of those touches in Cassia’s tale, too, just in case you wonder.
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Put yourself in the story. Or have Cassia stop in your neighborhood for a visit. Where would you want to dine with her? Create something imaginary, if you want, or simply take her (and us) to one of your favorites. (For some of our neighbor girls, it would definitely be the Creperie.)
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A large Queen Anne-style house with a distinctive witch’s hat tower something like this is the headquarters for Cassia’s extended family in my new novel, What’s Left. If only this one were pink, like hers. (Dover, New Hampshire.)
My newest book, Pit-a-Pat High Jinks, is a thorough reworking of my earlier Hippie Drum and Hippie Love novels.
Here are ten ways the result is new and improved.
These events are now seen a generation later by the protagonist’s daughter, Cassia, even if she has to pinch her nostrils closed while admitting some of the love scenes. She’s not as vocal here or as perceptible as she is in Daffodil Uprising, but she nevertheless instills a critical distance. There are good reasons so much of this era still puzzles her.
Many of the characters are renamed, starting with our hippie boy, Kenzie, and they’re now more fully developed. The backstory for Shoshanna, especially, emotionally blew me away while revising her part of the plot.
Drummer has evolved. He’s now Kenzie’s best friend and an integral counterpoint to the happenings, as is his pit-a-pat on his very private collection of drumheads.
This is the ’70s rather than a blend with the ’60s. Woodstock has happened, and the movement is heading off in many new directions. One of them is what’s supposed to be a hassle-free back-to-the-earth lifestyle like the one Kenzie’s landed in.
The two earlier novels are woven together. Originally, in the first one, Kenzie usually fails to land himself in bed – a reflection of the reality that in the hippie era, not everyone was getting laid all the time. That version focused more on his housemates and friends in town. In the other story, he’s far more successful sexually, though the events still lead to the same ending. In the new blended novel, he’s one hot dude, though it’s not always obvious how much of the action is a consequence of his imagination or dreaming and how much matches reality.
The blending instills a clearer plot line. His farmhouse and his social circle around campus are given balance, and his sequence of lovers advances his wisdom.
Kenzie’s attraction to Buddhism is more fully explained. The Tibetan practices transform him, inside and out.
The playful, even dizzying thrust of the original two novels is now countered by meaningful times of loneliness and brooding. Being hippie, after all, was no guarantee of always being happy. Quite the opposite. It often involved extremes of feeling.
This novel is now character-driven, rather than running along the surfaces of its actions. The actions grow largely from their individual emotions.
It’s all about connections. The people Kenzie meets lead to new adventures and first-hand discoveries.
Jnana's Red Barn 