The Boy from Nowhere - by Richard Robison (Paperback)

About the Book

"The Boy from Nowhere is a period piece memoir that depicts Richard Robison life as a boy who moves from town to town and school to school in his parents' upwardly mobile quest of the American Dream. The story begins with Robison's entry into fourth grade at a Rochester, New York city school where he finds himself, once again, the new kid in his class - his fourth school in four years. There he meets Matthias, a German American boy whose father was an American G.I. who helped liberate the Mauthausen concentration camp at the end of World War II. Another classmate and neighbor, a Jewish girl, Hannah, befriends him and introduces him to her family and Jewish culture. The unlikely alliance of Robison, Matthias, and Hannah grows through the school year until Robison is once again uprooted, this time to Buffalo, pulled in the slipstream of his father's dream of a better life: money, status, a family well provided for. By tenth grade - several moves and new schools later - Robison is floundering from a life of discontinuity and disconnection from friends, classmates, teammates, and ultimately even his parents. His father's ambition and drive lead down a path of alcoholism, violence, and resultant family secrecy. His mother's inability to protect him and extricate herself from a dream gone bad adds another layer of damage to an already lost boy. But the memoir is not dark, not entirely, and includes passages where humor supplants pain, where activities - baseball, skiing, bicycling - provide positive experiences and healthy responses to the angst of teenage life. Robison reveals the importance of teachers both good and bad; of friends gained and lost; of girlfriends, real and longed for; of the need for empathy expressed and shared, and of the need for forgiveness. Always forgiveness. And there is music - always music - British Invasion, Soul, Psychedelic, and Protest - that serves as an anchor, to uplift, to console, to connect in an otherwise untethered life"--

Book Synopsis

For young Richard, every year it's the same story: as soon as he settles into his surroundings, with its friendships, school, sports teams, and all those customs that make a place home, he is forced to move. As a boy who is wiser beyond his years, he sees his parents' strain to follow the upwardly mobile quest of the American Dream - but at what cost? This memoir reveals what it was like to be a teenager in 1960s America. It is a book about disconnection and loss, but also of hope and change: the person we once were does not dictate the person we will become. This recognition is what ultimately holds our destiny.

Review Quotes

"Offered with modesty and narrative grace, charged with heart-stopping events and characters" -- Stefanie Marlis

"Skillfully and empathically written" -- Sara Ries Dziekonski

"Richard Robison's memoir shows us the tender and brutal in a sensitive recollection" -- Peter Money

About the Author

Richard Robison moved to East Aurora, New York in 1984, and though he can now comfortably refer to himself as a Man from Somewhere, he still does not qualify for status as a local. He lives there with his wife Mary Jean, a psychotherapist, mother, and home decorator, not necessarily always in that order, where together they have restored their century-old home, as an act of love, for the work, family, and each other. A retired English professor, he has been a life-long skier, competitor, and coach, a baseball player into his forties, and an avid bicyclist since childhood. He attended State University of New York colleges in Buffalo and Fredonia, with degrees in Humanities and English, and the State University at Albany's doctoral program in creative writing. THE BOY FROM NOWHERE is his first full length book.