East Brother

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East Brother, a literary novel, tells the story of Jess Cooper, a Navy seaman gone AWOL, and his uncle Milo, the last hippie in East Brother, a fictional beach town in Southern California, as both struggle for moral purpose at the end of an era. It offers a realist sense of place as well as the pleasures of the tall tale, character-driven lyricism, and an elegiac social vision of an America that is slowly unraveling its myths.

After dropping acid on leave and landing first in the brig, then in a psychiatric ward, Jess takes refuge with his uncle Milo, thinking he might be able to help figure out what to do next: return to face the music or run away from a pointless life…and from himself. Milo knows a lot about running away. He’s been doing it for a long time. Both of them feel trapped between escape and belonging, fantasy and commitment. Looking for a little more self-knowledge over the next three days, they get help from characters like Jack the Cat, a heroin addict who thinks he may have been an international drug lord; Harry Contento, a Machiavellian real estate mogul; Olive Moll, a street kid living on the edge; and Gaspar Zuniga, a forger of Francisco de Zurbaran paintings. By the end, both come face to face with the lies they tell themselves and a truth that is finally much stranger than fiction.