Carl had been staying at the house longer than any other visitor ever had. At first, I didn’t realize that he was Carl Ferriman, the writer, the enormously famous writer whose first novel had become such a cultural phenomenon that even I, never much interested in books, had heard about it, probably because it involved hippies, a wounded soldier who had fought in Vietnam, a road trip across America, guns, drugs, sex, and a quest for a mysterious stranger who may have been God’s lost son. Or something like that. In any case, I had never read it and even if I had a copy, it wouldn’t have helped me identify Carl because he wouldn’t allow his picture to be printed on the book jacket. I had heard that, too.
The Comet Year (Novel Excerpt)
