The Nice Guy — Vincent Eaton

"So much of everything isn't the way I'd do it at all. I wouldn't do myself the way I've been done." So begins the story of Zed Cupping, a discontented young husband who struggles against the mediocrity that his everyday existence has become. During one summer in a beach town in Southern California in the mid-1970s, Zed struggles to understand his wife, not remain infatuated with an old flame, feel fatherly toward his daughter, seeking connection and friendship, trying to discover fresh affection with a high school student, or a unlikely ex-classmate gone bad. Zed represents an uninhibited masculine psyche come of age in the most affluent time and place of the world's history. The restless yet honest narrator wanders his beach town where he conducts a quest that represents his hopes for finally achieving emotional, sexual and intellectual fulfillment. This nice guy faces the unfolding consequences of the actions that drive his personality in his search for freedom and self-realization that borders on mental implosion.