Author's e-books - coming of age. Page - 3
Rub a dub dub
Three men in a tub
And who do you think they be?
The butcher, the baker
The candlestickmaker
And all of them lost at sea.
Aboard the spy ship U.S.S. Argosy in the war-tossed waters off the coast of Vietnam, three young American sailors form an unlikely bond. Each has fled an America they were raised to love but somehow no longer understand in the tumult of the late 1960s. When forced to choose whether to face combat or stay and fight the war in the streets, they sign up for a war that reflected the conflict that raged inside each of them. The one thing of which they were certain was that the only people in the world that they could depend on were each other.
In the tradition of Tim O’Brien’s "The Things They Carried," Denis Johnson’s "Tree of Smoke," and Phillip Caputo’s "A Rumor of War," "The Candlestickmaker" recalls a Vietnam that seared disenchantment into a post World War II generation who learned to question authority at all levels. A coming-of-age story bookended by shocking revelations that shatter illusions about patriotism, government and the nature of modern warfare, "The Candlestickmaker" takes readers on a voyage that will guarantee they never read the Mother Goose nursery rhyme in quite the same way again.
Journey is the first book of the groundbreaking coming-of-age trilogy If Where You're Going Isn't Home, the story of a boy growing up Mormon in America with a dream to play jazz trumpet. It is the recipient of a coveted ForeWord Clarion Five Star Review.
It begins in 1956. Young Shake Tauffler hears a line of music on the radio of a cattle truck that changes his life forever. The music is jazz. The instrument is a trumpet. His family is moving one last time - from a southern Utah ranch to a town outside Salt Lake - on his father's quest to bring his family from Switzerland to the heartland of the Mormon church. In two months, when Shake turns twelve, he'll join his buddies on a shared journey through the ranks of his father's take-no-prisoners religion. At the same time, armed with a used trumpet and his bike, he'll start another journey, on his own, to a place whose high priests aren't his father's friends but the Negro greats of jazz, men he's been taught to believe are cursed but from whose music he learns everything he dreams of being.
Shaded with Huck Finn and James Dean, Shake Tauffler is an American kid we all recognize, a kid who responds to bigotry, abuse, repression, hypocrisy, and death with courage, humor, heartbreak, often pain, and always wonder. His rites of passage are keenly drawn and vividly familiar, his dream to play jazz shared by most any musician. But his ten-year story of growing up Mormon in America takes us to an altogether different place. Journey, the first book of the trilogy If Where You're Going Isn't Home, is for those of us who long to hunker down and lose ourselves in a big American story, one whose narrative canvas takes us from Switzerland to a southern Utah ranch, to Salt Lake and its outskirts towns, into the secret holy places of the Mormon Church, across the landscapes of Nevada, California, Las Vegas, Kentucky, Austria, the Mojave Desert. Lyrical, rowdy, unflinching, Journey follows Shake across the first four years of his search for the clarity and flight of a trumpet line to lift him like a steel bird out from under the iron sky of his faith and guide him to sexual, moral, and musical consciousness. It is a search that resolves - for now - in startling and extraordinary tenderness.
Michael Strong, literary agent and co-founder of Zola Books, describes the book this way:
"Max Zimmer has written The Great American Mormon Novel. For decades, readers have depended upon a few extraordinary writers to understand fully what it means to be an American - Philip Roth, Julia Alvarez, Ralph Ellison, Erica Jong, John Updike. Zimmer has added a critical new dimension to our shared national understanding of who we are and how we got here in this sweeping narrative. Twelve-year-old Shake Tauffler's decade-long journey through the Mormon Church and beyond will resonate with all Americans who ponder their soul and place in our changing national portrait."
The last thing Ruby Tabeata expected on her way to a Jack Kerouac reading was to be hauled to the police station. Just a few weeks shy of her twelfth birthday in 1958, Ruby lives in Greenwich Village and dreams of meeting famous poets while writing her own poetry. Instead, she is accused of trying to steal fruit from a local vendor and forced to go into a children’s home. Her only choice is to follow her heart—and find the one thing she needs with the power to help her heal.
Lizla is a beautiful princess
coming of age in a world
crumbling around her, destined
to become Egypt’s queen and
protector of its ancient Wisdom.
Penny works in her father's store while she studies business part-time. She alternates between fantasizing about co-worker Shawn Moore. and planning her escape. Shawn works to support his disabled mother. He refuses to look closely at Penny because she deserves better. When Penny's grandmother has a stroke, her escape plans are postponed. Can Shawn give Penny a reason to stay?
Rub a dub dub
Three men in a tub
And who do you think they be?
The butcher, the baker
The candlestickmaker
And all of them lost at sea.
Aboard the spy ship U.S.S. Argosy in the war-tossed waters off the coast of Vietnam, three young American sailors form an unlikely bond. Each has fled an America they were raised to love but somehow no longer understand in the tumult of the late 1960s. When forced to choose whether to face combat or stay and fight the war in the streets, they sign up for a war that reflected the conflict that raged inside each of them. The one thing of which they were certain was that the only people in the world that they could depend on were each other.
In the tradition of Tim O’Brien’s "The Things They Carried," Denis Johnson’s "Tree of Smoke," and Phillip Caputo’s "A Rumor of War," "The Candlestickmaker" recalls a Vietnam that seared disenchantment into a post World War II generation who learned to question authority at all levels. A coming-of-age story bookended by shocking revelations that shatter illusions about patriotism, government and the nature of modern warfare, "The Candlestickmaker" takes readers on a voyage that will guarantee they never read the Mother Goose nursery rhyme in quite the same way again.
Journey is the first book of the groundbreaking coming-of-age trilogy If Where You're Going Isn't Home, the story of a boy growing up Mormon in America with a dream to play jazz trumpet. It is the recipient of a coveted ForeWord Clarion Five Star Review.
It begins in 1956. Young Shake Tauffler hears a line of music on the radio of a cattle truck that changes his life forever. The music is jazz. The instrument is a trumpet. His family is moving one last time - from a southern Utah ranch to a town outside Salt Lake - on his father's quest to bring his family from Switzerland to the heartland of the Mormon church. In two months, when Shake turns twelve, he'll join his buddies on a shared journey through the ranks of his father's take-no-prisoners religion. At the same time, armed with a used trumpet and his bike, he'll start another journey, on his own, to a place whose high priests aren't his father's friends but the Negro greats of jazz, men he's been taught to believe are cursed but from whose music he learns everything he dreams of being.
Shaded with Huck Finn and James Dean, Shake Tauffler is an American kid we all recognize, a kid who responds to bigotry, abuse, repression, hypocrisy, and death with courage, humor, heartbreak, often pain, and always wonder. His rites of passage are keenly drawn and vividly familiar, his dream to play jazz shared by most any musician. But his ten-year story of growing up Mormon in America takes us to an altogether different place. Journey, the first book of the trilogy If Where You're Going Isn't Home, is for those of us who long to hunker down and lose ourselves in a big American story, one whose narrative canvas takes us from Switzerland to a southern Utah ranch, to Salt Lake and its outskirts towns, into the secret holy places of the Mormon Church, across the landscapes of Nevada, California, Las Vegas, Kentucky, Austria, the Mojave Desert. Lyrical, rowdy, unflinching, Journey follows Shake across the first four years of his search for the clarity and flight of a trumpet line to lift him like a steel bird out from under the iron sky of his faith and guide him to sexual, moral, and musical consciousness. It is a search that resolves - for now - in startling and extraordinary tenderness.
Michael Strong, literary agent and co-founder of Zola Books, describes the book this way:
"Max Zimmer has written The Great American Mormon Novel. For decades, readers have depended upon a few extraordinary writers to understand fully what it means to be an American - Philip Roth, Julia Alvarez, Ralph Ellison, Erica Jong, John Updike. Zimmer has added a critical new dimension to our shared national understanding of who we are and how we got here in this sweeping narrative. Twelve-year-old Shake Tauffler's decade-long journey through the Mormon Church and beyond will resonate with all Americans who ponder their soul and place in our changing national portrait."
The last thing Ruby Tabeata expected on her way to a Jack Kerouac reading was to be hauled to the police station. Just a few weeks shy of her twelfth birthday in 1958, Ruby lives in Greenwich Village and dreams of meeting famous poets while writing her own poetry. Instead, she is accused of trying to steal fruit from a local vendor and forced to go into a children’s home. Her only choice is to follow her heart—and find the one thing she needs with the power to help her heal.
Lizla is a beautiful princess
coming of age in a world
crumbling around her, destined
to become Egypt’s queen and
protector of its ancient Wisdom.
Penny works in her father's store while she studies business part-time. She alternates between fantasizing about co-worker Shawn Moore. and planning her escape. Shawn works to support his disabled mother. He refuses to look closely at Penny because she deserves better. When Penny's grandmother has a stroke, her escape plans are postponed. Can Shawn give Penny a reason to stay?