Chasing after dad...

Summer in the Land of Skin
by Jody Gehrman


Yet another search for a dead parent. Anna Medina, 25, leaves her empty life in California and goes to Bellingham, Washington to find her dead (suicide) father's former best friend and fellow luthier, Bender. There she falls into an orgy of gin, music and general craziness in the company of Lucinda and Arlan, who allow her to sleep on their couch.

Bender is a drunk and hasn't made a guitar in years. But at one point he gives Anna a package of her father's letters to him, which begin at about the same age that she is in the present. At first, she is repulsed by her father's accounts of his wanderings and love affairs in Europe and elsewhere, but she soon discovers that the only way to save herself is to immerse herself in her and her father's past.

I am told that this, like some of the others below, is a "chick book." Not the sort of thing I would normally be into. But I think it is well written, with some good characters, and it addresses something that is important for most humans.

Jody Gehrman is an award winning playwright. She teaches at Mendocino College.


Jody Gehrman