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From Kirkus Reviews:

In this elegiac memoir, Schneider remembers his youth in the 1960s and ’70s in Southern California. 

The author’s parents moved to Southern California as part of the “great migration of the early 1950s,” the beginning of the “golden age” of the state. He was a happy and creatively mischievous child—he learned, long before the internet demystified such things, that saltpeter could be used to make homemade gunpowder, a discovery that made for an unfortunately potent science project. His childhood had a wholesome quality; his family was obsessed with Disneyland (“our holy grail, the promised land”).  Upon turning 9, the author requested and received a single share of Disney stock.  Once, his Uncle Rob took him on a kind of safari expedition to see, for the first time, hippies, memorably described by Schneider as a “mysterious and fearsome subculture.” Tragically, the brightness of his childhood was dimmed by a horrific event . . . . [spoiler alert] 
 

The author’s openness is deeply admirable—without sentimentality or rancor, he invites readers into the most intimate recesses of his life. His writing is somehow both anecdotally informal and lapidary, and, at its best, it rises to the poetic.  While a profoundly melancholic thread runs through this remembrance, it also has a good deal of lightsome, genuinely funny humor. This is a delightfully thoughtful memoir—one can only wish it were longer. 

A meditative and moving recollection conveyed in elegant prose.

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From BookLife Reviews by Publisher's Weekly: 

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Poet [Byron] Schneider (author of Poems to Science and Industry) delivers a compact memoir rich with polished prose, a striking depiction of a 1960s and ‘70s Southern California that brims with steady sunshine and stylish new inventions. From the novelty of drive-up tellers to the first days of Disneyland, Schneider paints his upbringing during “the golden age of California” in fiery strokes, blazing his memories across a backdrop of family secrets and hidden trauma . . . . [spoiler alert]

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Shared through intimate snapshots of childhood memories—and framed against an undercurrent of foreboding that runs throughout—Schneider’s recollections pack a powerful punch . . . [but he] never lets the calamity overshadow the rest of his memoir. Using his poet’s touch, he relays thwarted childhood runaway schemes, science class experiments that go awry, hipster cousins ruining the spirit of Christmas, and the lasting effects of shattered young love (“For years I would fall hard whenever I fell in love. And even harder when love departed” he writes). 

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Schneider’s short essays roll a striking portrait of a distinct time and place into a highly readable story of his early life, delivering a patchwork of potent experiences that feel fully formed and deeply expressive. Classic music and pop culture of the ‘60s and ‘70s invade the memories, from Schneider’s description of Joni Mitchell as a “guide, articulating the minor keys of my emotional state” to his dabbling in drugs on “the beach not far from Nixon’s San Clemente estate.” This is an exquisite rendering of innocence, unraveling, and identity.

 

Takeaway: Exquisite coming-of-age amid trauma, family secrets, and 1960s awakenings.

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