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Gone and Back Again Fall 2007 
It is 1978, and Caley's family is reconfigured by divorce; a situation exacerbated by his father's strange personality disorder as well as his mother's series of bad decisions resulting in a string of moves that eventually lands them halfway across the country. Gone and Back Again, is Caley's comical, sad descent into darkness, mild insanity, and way too much free food. Regardless, he never loses his keen eye for detail, irony, and conflict even as he begins blaming his situation on old Star Trek episodes, his glowing alarm clock, and John Belushi's cynical behavior on Saturday Night Live. Caley's narrative picks up after his family, consisting of his mother, his step-father, his older brother, and his little sister has just arrived in Naples, Florida, the endpoint to an emotional roller coaster ride that has left him with the sensation that his whole family was "at the bottom of something that was really deep and impossible to get out from." Based loosely on the author's own strange childhood (proving that truth is stranger than ficition), Gone and Back Again is an account of an adolescent's comical tumble into severe depression and his slow, amusing rise out of it. Against all odds Caley goes away and comes back again, a journey that makes for a touching and offbeat read. |