Joe the Salamander - by Timothy Gager (Paperback)

About the Book

Joe the Salamander tells the story of Joe Gamut, a brilliant boy who struggles in the neurotypical world. Gager creates wise and foolish characters, and tells a poignant story about life with or on the spectrum.

Book Synopsis

Joe the Salamander tells the story of Joe Gamut, a brilliant boy whose infatuation with Superman helps him through his struggles in the neurotypical world. Timothy Gager creates charmingly wise and foolish support characters, captures quirky 1990s nostalgia, and tells a poignant story about life with or on the spectrum.

The book is divided into seven parts, each detailing a section of the Gamuts' life. In a prologue, Joe's father, Adrian, describes his own uncomfortable youth in foster care, and his finding solace and stability in young Millie Englander, now Millie Gamut. In part one Millie gives birth to Joe while Adrian, overwhelmed, hands out candy cigarettes to pedestrians on the street. Like his father, Joe rides a different rainbow. As a newborn, he tries to please those around him by refusing to cry; when he realizes they want him to cry, he complies, nonstop, for days. He's preternaturally sensitive, but balance is hard. As toddler and pre-schooler, he finds comfort in all things Superman-tv, cape and t-shirt-and in his cure-all word: "Yes."

When Joe begins school, he excels in writing but speaks only his "Yes." As teachers try to implement flawed Individual Learning plans, Millie practices patience and incremental repetition, balancing Adrian's hyper-focus and fears. An engaging young nurse, Laura Wellin, befriends the family, giving readers yet another lens through which to appreciate Joe's world-and her own. Shades Creek, a pet store owner whose energy creates a city-wide Salamander Festival-he understands Joe instinctively. It's the "normalcy" of grandparents and psychiatrists who wish to control one another that gets ironic treatment from our author.

By part six, after a popular kid has saved him from high school bullying, Joe finds himself accepted by his peers. Then, just as things are looking up, his life is upended, leaving him more unsupported than he's ever been. After a long gap of time, Joe's struggles in the neurotypical world end surprisingly, and, we think, well.

Timothy Gager's Joe the Salamander draws good-humored yet serious attention to the importance of accepting diversity, reminding readers that no matter our differences, our abilities, our disabilities, or our circumstances, we are never fully alone.

Review Quotes

Gager both invokes psychological insight [into autism] and mocks its blindness. From infancy, Joe "thinks" articulately, but rarely speaks, and his understanding of the world of Not Me is awry and sensitive, somewhat like Faulkner's Benjy's. The reader accepts Joe's early Superman obsession, which translates into a defensive fantasy of having "powers"; but the novel goes beyond this...to sheer inspiration as it follows Joe, his parents, a friendly nurse, and many others though his stages to maturity; and then delivers a tragic complication....

Dewitt Henry, author of Endings and Beginnings: Family Essays

"Joe the Salamander is an unforgettable book [about] one man's journey in a world ... difficult to navigate if you're "not like everyone else." ... An uplifting and heartfelt story."

--Carol Gillis, Senior Director of Autism Services at The Edinburg Center in Bedford MA

Timothy Gager has knocked Joe the Salamander out of the park. He drags us into the mind of a non-verbal infant and then pulls us through his life as a witness to his confusion and pain. The book unfolds with cinematic grace, leaving me wanting more. I'd love to see this on a screen or on my desk as a screenplay.

Korey Pollard, Assistant Director/Producer, The Orville, House M.D., Deadwood, Monk