Secret Frequencies

John Skoyles guides us through 1960s New York, a city we only thought we knew. Against a backdrop of late-night radio airwaves featuring talk-show kings like Long John Nebel, the sixteen-year-old pairs up with his Uncle Fred, a Mob associate and man-about-town who presses him into the seamy underworld of con games and call girls. At the same time, his Aunt Linda finds him a job as a messenger at Paramount Pictures on Times Square, where she works as a secretary and where Michael Caine and Jane Fonda make cameo appearances.From the bars and swank apartments of Manhattan's Upper East Side to 42nd Street flophouses and haunts like Hubert's Freak Show, he comes face to face with New York's most comic, absurd, and sometimes dangerous seductions. As his aunt notices his transformation, she reveals a shocking side of her own that will twist and charge his journey into adulthood, and Linda and Fred engage in an escalating rivalry for his allegiance. "Secret Frequencies" spins from deadpan hilarity to unflinching bleakness in graceful turns. With pathos, wit, and searing realism, this memoir joins the ranks of classic coming of age narratives. John Skoyles is a professor in the Department of Writing, Literature, and Publishing at Emerson College. He is the author of a collection of essays and three books of poems, including "Definition of the Soul". He lives in Truro, Massachusetts.