Look, I'm Gone - Paperback

by James Howard Kunstler (Author)

November, 1963, the week before Thanksgiving. Twelve-year-old Jeff Greenaway, recently exiled from Manhattan to Ponsonby Hall, a New Hampshire prep school "for boys who behaved badly," wins big in a clandestine poker game. The next day, President John F. Kennedy is murdered in Dallas. The Ponsonby boys are sent home early by train for the holiday - and the president's funeral.

Back at home with his parents on East 79^th Street, and restless over the tragic events playing out on TV, Jeff ventures out into the city on his own, an explorer in the underbelly of Times Square and its colorful denizens. He falls hard for the teenage ingenue Kathy Kaine, star of the Broadway hit The Wayward Family Singers, who lives unsupervised in the historic Bomoseen Hotel uptown. It's a first romance for him, but not for her.

Unable to swallow the official story about JFK's assassination, he stakes out the Russian Mission to the United Nations on 68^th Street and Park Avenue, taunting the KBG goons who guard the entrance until Ambassador Zorin himself takes Jeff for a mind-bending ride into Central Park to explain how the world really works.

Throughout his week of romance and international intrigue, Jeff becomes immersed in the world-changing novel, The Catcher in the Rye, and is finally driven to run away from the city, determined to meet J.D. Salinger, the book's reclusive author, who he finds back in New Hampshire - not far from Ponsonby Hall. As a blizzard sweeps through the state, "Jerry" Salinger is trapped in his farmhouse debating Hindu religion with Jeff Greenaway, a disciple of Salinger's own troubled, epic creation, Holden Caulfield.

Set against the crackle of AM radios, Times Square dives, Park Avenue penthouses, and the uneasy hush that followed November 22, 1963, Look, I'm Gone is a razor-witted, big-hearted coming-of-age tale that captures the very moment America - and one smart-mouthed boy - lost their innocence. The novel seamlessly blends historical fiction, social satire, and teenage rebellion into an unforgettable journey from the Gothic rituals of prep-school to the vibrant, yet perilous, streets of mid-1960s Manhattan.