{"product_id":"east-brother-9780578572611","title":"East Brother","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eEast Brother\u003c\/em\u003e, 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAfter 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. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eMattessich, Stefan Nicholas:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - Stefan Mattessich was educated at Yale College and UC Santa Cruz, where he received a PhD by writing a dissertation on the novelist Thomas Pynchon that was eventually published as a monograph called Lines of Flight (Duke University Press). He has worn many hats as a writer: screenwriter, film reviewer, and literary critic as well as fiction writer. His first novel, a coming-of-age story called Point Guard, was offered by Touchpoint Press in 2017. A recent fiction publication is On Liberty, the first chapter of East Brother. It appeared as a stand-alone story in the Spring 2017 issue of the Santa Monica Review. Another short story, Angel in the Mango Tree, appeared in the Spring 2019 issue of Permafrost Magazine. He teaches English at Santa Monica College and lives in Venice, California.","brand":"Atopon Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50922514678034,"sku":"9780578572611","price":10.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_13b3760e-8daa-46c9-8ebb-d78ad43a823a.jpg?v=1738930710","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/east-brother-9780578572611","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}