Abandoned in the 1970s at age 12, the author of this
searching memoir, who also wrote the novel
Carter Beats the Devil, spends the second and third decades of his life wending his way through the
labyrinth of motherless San Francisco and eccentric Los Angeles. His game plan?
Evade the violent con men and slippery-tongued psychiatrist his bohemian mom
dated, and choose whether to drive down that "scenic road of forgiveness"
or seize the self-determinist spirit of California and set himself free.
