No Palm Trees On Cuttyhunk: Surviving My Adolescence

A teenage boy’s coming-of-age memoir and love letter to the Cape Cod Island of Cuttyhunk.

When fourteen-year-old Geoff gets the opportunity to travel to and camp on the island of Cuttyhunk during the summer of 1959, it is a chance for adventure and to escape his controlled home life. Little does he know that the tiny Cape Cod island and its inhabitant’s way of life will become part of his soul and help heal wounds he didn’t even know he had.

Geoff navigates his friendship with his co-adventurer Peter, learns to sail, lands his first job and experiences first love on the Massachusetts island. The extraordinary characters he befriends, like the foul-mouthed, knife-wielding chef who ends up being his fierce advocate, shape Geoff’s adolescence. Just as he begins to think and make decisions for himself, his time on the island comes to an end. Geoff realizes that his troubled relationship with his father is driven by something more powerful than he can fathom and he wonders if his father will even recognize him when he gets home after his transformative summer.