This is a monument to Jed Kesey, Ken Kesey's college age son who died in a college team van on the way home from a college wrestling match. Sailor Song, which I'm about halfway through was written over several years with Jed dying someplace in the middle of its writing. There's a long article about Kesey's loss in the Summer 2010 issue of The Missouri Review. The critics hated Sailor Song when it was published. It's a mess of a book, but the ability is present and there are some paragraphs that are unbelievably exquisite. It's akin to reading Hem's unpublished novels (Islands In The Stream, True at First Light, and the other one that I can't think of.) It's not what got him there, but you take the faults of your friends with a light touch, don't you? This sculpture was done by Jed's Wrestling Coach. My wife says I'm getting morbid.
I let the book I published sit for a year, because my father really died just as I was completing the first draft.
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