Earlier this year my latest novel came out from Beck & Branch: The World Against Her Skin. It’s my mother’s story, but I invented much of it, including a gay older son. Both boys go to a prep school I call Darwin, which will look familiar. Indeed, members of the class of ’60 are sure to recognize the school’s art teacher, who plays a significant role in the book.
I’ve written memoirs about my son and my father, and now this novel about my mother. Family life intrigues me, both past and present. For Christmas I’ll head out to Steamboat Springs to visit with my son Janir and his family. Grandkids! I’m predictably crazy about them.
I look back at a class note I made in 2014 about the deaths of Barry Campbell and Sandy Weymouth. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about both of them. I’m still re-listening to the 1100 tapes Sandy and I made to each other, and to dozens that Barry and I exchanged. I’m often that pato lógico, that odd duck that flies through life looking backward.
John Thorndike ’60
