The Garden of What Was and Was Not — David Stone

Imagine your dreams are shattered when the words, “Our beloved President John F. Kennedy is dead,” come crackling over a PA system in your boyhood classroom. And imagine nearly forty years later, you feel your Manhattan building wobble beneath your feet as a jet slams into the World Trade Center, just a few short blocks away.

The whole world changes with such singular, immortal events.

In his fictional autobiography, Peter McCarthy looks back through the decades that have brought us to the twenty-first century. He takes us on a cultural journey beginning with the turbulent '60s, when he was a high-school dropout, on his own by age seventeen and embellishing his resume to land a job. Living a seemingly serpentine life, McCarthy picked his way through a series of cultural reinventions: the emergence of Rock and Roll, the Vietnam catastrophe, the effervescent rebellion of the Civil Rights movement, the disillusionment of Watergate, the dawn of the Internet, and ultimately the disbelief of September 11.

Through the lens of his relationships, peace activism, and employment, Peter realizes that being distanced from the past is just an illusion, that there's a true continuum running through his -- and everyone's -- life.