About Anthony Caplan
Anthony Caplan is an independent writer, teacher and homesteader in northern New England. He has worked at various times as a shrimp fisherman, environmental activist, journalist, taxi-driver, builder, window-washer, and telemarketer. Currently, Caplan is working on restoring a 150 year old farmstead where he and his family tend sheep and chickens, grow most of their own vegetables, and have started a small apple orchard from scratch.
You can find him at http://www.anthonycaplanwrites.com/
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| Latitudes A Story of Coming Home |
LATITUDES – A story of one boy overcoming dysfuntion, dislocation and distance…
When Father and Mother, a highflying young American lawyer and his party-hard bride, fall prey to the self-destructive lure of alcohol and sexual liberation, Will and his sisters pay the price in divorce and kidnappings that take them back and forth between the rain forest hideaways of coastal Latin America and the placid suburbs of Long Island. Will identifies with the oppressed workers laboring in his father’s fast food restaurant and longs for American freedom. Father remarries the daughter of a local aristocrat, and Will is sent off to the hothouse world of a New England boarding school.
Swimming in a sea of Fair Isle sweaters and LL Bean boots, Will discovers a core of resilience in himself that allows him to survive, thrive, and ultimately embrace the flawed and varied worlds he inhabits. Will reconnects with his Mother, sinking into a New York City world of Irish bars and one night stands he cannot save her from. With a little help from friends, and a high school Shakespeare class taught by the school’s closeted gay athletic trainer, Will begins to see the possibility of finding his true path. Latitudes charts the birth pangs of a quest for self and soul — from a tropical childhood to a coming of age on the road.
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Read the Excerpt
This time of
uncertainty came to an end before it could gel into something, a pattern, a new
beginning or different stamp to the days. It was one day in late August, an
ordinary moment that would not have remained in his memory, much as the days
that preceded it. In Will’s mind he and his sisters, their new neighborhood
friends, seemed born full-blown in the backyard in the midst of some forgotten
game. He was immersed again, as in the swimming pool on Margarita Island, in
his inner thoughts even with the swirl of kids and dogs and the sun passing
through the bright blue sky, as two cars pulled up on the street, low-slung,
long and dark, their red brake lights warning to stop and look. Out stepped
four or five men in pale trench coats. As they walked up the driveway, Alexa
gasped.
"Father,"
she said. Will had recognized him at almost the same moment.
"Father,"
he repeated and broke into a run as Father smiled and held out his arms. The
other men stopped in their tracks. Father hugged the four children. It was
unusual, but exciting that he’d come all this way to rejoin them. The other men
from the two cars must have been his friends.
"How about
an ice cream?" he asked. This seemed unusual and exciting also. They had
never known him to offer treats, but maybe this was his way of breaking the
ice, start in on a new footing.
"Sure,"
Will said, and Alexa agreed, eager as he was, speaking for all three girls.
They all four sat in the backseat of the back car. Father sat in the front
while another man drove. As the cars sped away, the babysitter emerged from the
house and saw a knot of neighborhood children walking down the sidewalk, but
not Will or his sisters. Breathing hard, panic struck. She ran back inside and
grabbed the telephone.
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