Venice Beach
It's 1968 and California is in ferment: war, drugs, revolution. Moon - as the boy renamed himself after fleeing his abusive home in the American heartland - finds his way to Venice Beach, the decadent epicenter of bohemian Los Angeles. Over the next two years he struggles with drugs, sexual orientation, insanity, old ghosts, and first loves as he assembles a makeshift family of fellow misfits. But as this family begins to crumble, Moon is blindsided by a discovery that upends his life's narrative. Venice Beach is a coming-of-age story like no other.
"In this novel, a teenager comes of age under the most turbulent family circumstances... Habeeb's engaging novel skillfully explores the dark underbelly of growing up in an abusive household and trying to choose a new family. Moon's early life experiences are full of trauma and pain. 'When kids run away from home, ' he reflects at the beginning of the book, 'people try to find them and send them back. It apparently never occurs to them that kids run away for a reason, and because running away is difficult and scary that reason must be a damn good one.' The author deftly concocts an emotionally tumultuous narrative with an array of misfits and outcasts who come together out of both necessity and love...Readers will root for the hero's success and safety. An engrossing tale about fighting for survival and finding love."
-Kirkus Reviews
Author: William Mark Habeeb
Publisher: Rootstock Publishing
Published: 08/17/2021
Pages: 254
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.83lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.58d
ISBN: 9781578690619
Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 01/01/0001
About the Author
Habeeb, William Mark: - William Mark Habeeb was born and raised in Alabama, the son of a Lebanese immigrant father and a Cuban-American mother. He earned degrees in international relations at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins universities, read literature and philosophy at the University of Sussex and studied psychoanalytic theory with the Washington Center for Psychoanalysis. He teaches in Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and lives in Virginia. He is a member of the board of Virginia Humanities, the state's humanities council. Habeeb has published over a dozen non-fiction books for scholarly, general public and young adult audiences. His short fiction has appeared in the Berkeley Fiction Review and Broken Pencil. Venice Beach is his first novel.