East Brother

<p><em>East Brother</em> a literary novel tells the story of Jess Cooper a Navy seaman gone AWOL and his uncle Milo the last hippie in East Brother a fictional beach town in Southern California as both struggle for moral purpose at the end of an era. It offers a realist sense of place as well as the pleasures of the tall tale character-driven lyricism and an elegiac social vision of an America that is slowly unraveling its myths.</p><p>After dropping acid on leave and landing first in the brig then in a psychiatric ward Jess takes refuge with his uncle Milo thinking he might be able to help figure out what to do next:  return to face the music or run away from a pointless life…and from himself. Milo knows a lot about running away. He’s been doing it for a long time. Both of them feel trapped between escape and belonging fantasy and commitment. Looking for a little more self-knowledge over the next three days they get help from characters like Jack the Cat a heroin addict who thinks he may have been an international drug lord; Harry Contento a Machiavellian real estate mogul; Olive Moll a street kid living on the edge; and Gaspar Zuniga a forger of Francisco de Zurbaran paintings. By the end both come face to face with the lies they tell themselves and a truth that is finally much stranger than fiction. </p>