Bewilderment - by Michael Onofrey (Paperback)

About the Book

After three decades of an over-extended youth abroad, fifty-six-year-old Wade Ricky returns home to the L.A. suburbs to care for his dying mother and contemplate his memories of a bicycle trip across India; a two-year stint in Peshawar as an assistant to a blind British chemist; and a cheerfully surreal expat world of drugs and sexual voyeurism.

Book Synopsis

After three decades of an over-extended youth abroad, fifty-six-year-old Wade Ricky returns home to the Los Angeles suburbs to care for his dying mother and come to terms with his memories of an awkwardly sensual affair with Herta, a German woman he meets while biking across India; a two-year stint in Peshawar as an assistant to a blind British expat; and a cheerfully surreal world of drugs and sexual voyeurism in which Wade is continually a complicit outsider. As months turn into years, Wade finds companionship with a landscape painter grieving for her son killed in Iraq and slowly rebuilds his life in America--even as he begins to understand, finally, why he must be alone.

In pared-down, richly evocative prose that captures the hidden complexities of social and geopolitical relations, Michael Onofrey's debut novel is a loving, even joyful meditation about the transience of human connection and the experience of solitude.

Review Quotes

"An accomplished and witty novel that examines the line drawn between individual perception and the larger reality, then provides its reader permission to blur the line in order to take it all in." - Jen Knox, author of After the Gazebo

"A daring and adventurous story about life's choices, those we make and those made for us." - Christine Cote, Still Point Art Gallery and Shanti Arts Publishing