Synopses & Reviews
K. M. Soehnlein burst onto the literary scene with his bestselling debut novel,
The World of Normal Boys, which told the story of a suburban family's disintegration and a young man's coming of age with both rage and a ferocious tenderness. Now, in
You Can Say You Knew Me When, he tackles the thorny landscape of fathers and sons, exploring the risks of connection and the impossibility of life without it.
Charming underachiever Jamie Garner is living a sexy slacker's life in San Francisco during the dot-com boom avoiding his stalled career as a radio producer, barely holding on to his relationship, but surrounded by fun-loving friends. And then Jamie gets the call he's always dreaded: Teddy, the father who never accepted him, has died. It's time for the prodigal son to come home to the subdivisions and strip malls of suburban New Jersey to face the emotionally barren family he left behind years ago. What he learns on this visit will change his life in San Francisco forever.
Caught between the guilt he wants to shake and the grief he can't express, Jamie takes solace in a box of memorabilia he finds in the attic, marked "1960," the year his father spent in San Francisco but kept secret. Jamie is especially drawn to a moody, enigmatic photo of the stunning Dean Foster, his dad's closest friend, who headed west then mysteriously disappeared. The cache of letters Teddy wrote to Dean reveals a friendship reminiscent of Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady and shows Jamie a father he never knew: an artist and poetic rebel, a man of secret passions and surprising revelations.
Determined to unlock the mystery of his father, Jamie seeks out the artists and poets, the free spirits and wild men mentioned in Teddy's letters. It's a journey that takes him deep into the subcultures of San Francisco, from the bohemian heyday of the Beat Generation through the Internet mania of his contemporary world, even as it unleashes something primal, hungry, and slightly dangerous in Jamie. As his search for the elusive Dean Foster turns ever more obsessive, undermining his friendships, his income, and his fidelity to his partner, Jamie is forced to decide what he is willing to risk in the pursuit of the truth.
At once lyrical and hard-hitting, K. M. Soehnlein's second novel is a stunningly soulful love letter, one that could be written from father to son, from lover to lover, from the self to the deepest recesses of the heart.
Review
"You Can Say You Knew Me When is the sort of novel that keeps you home on a weekend night. The lives K. M. Soehnlein gives us are wilder, braver, and truer than our own. The World of Normal Boys demonstrated he was a writer to watch. This one demonstrates why we shouldn't take our eyes off him, even for a second." Daniel Handler, author of The Basic Eight and Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events
Synopsis
Jamie Garner is living a sexy slacker's life in San Francisco when he gets the call that his father has died. It's time for the prodigal son to come home to suburban New Jersey to face the emotionally barren family he left behind. What he learns on this visit will change his life forever.
Synopsis
Film rights to The World of Normal Boys have been optioned by Academy Award winners Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. A San Franciso Chronicle bestseller and Lambda Book Report National bestseller, The World of Normal Boys won the Lambda Book Award for Best Gay Novel and K. M. Soehnlein was nominated for InsightOut's Violet Quill award.
About the Author
K. M. Soehnlein is the author of the Lambda Award-winning, bestselling novel, The World of Normal Boys. He lives in San Francisco, where he works as a freelance writer, editor, and writing teacher. This is his second novel.