LOSING AUGUST
by W.S. Simons
Pick up a copy today at Glendora Books in Buchanan, Michigan
ISBN: 9798989359424
In 1965, the body of an intellectually challenged young man from a dilapidated amusement park drifts onto a river bank. His death in the small Lake Michigan town triggers a series of events leading to the murder of another carnie. At the heart of the investigation are three young girls, their brothers and a police chief who resists looking for the truth fearing what he may find. A character driven narrative more than a mystery, Losing August is a coming-of-age story for the fictional town of Edgewater as much as its inhabitants.
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The Writing Journey: Losing August
If I didn’t write, I don’t know how I’d cope with all the stupid things I’ve done in my life. Imposing my mistakes onto a character has a way of relieving some degree of self-recrimination. Did I really sneak out and take a late-night walk to the old amusement park when I was ten? Maybe. Did I really sit behind a bush at the river in nothing but underpants waiting for a friend to wash river muck off my clothes up in the neighborhood while her grandmother watched soap operas? I’m not saying.
I used to volunteer at a summer program for special needs kids. There was a particular young man with Downs Syndrome who was always quick with a smile and eager to hug. When he saw one of the counselors, a six-foot bear of a man, splashing about in the pool, this young man reached in, grabbed an arm and yanked him clean out of the water. He had misinterpreted the splashing for drowning and was quite upset. Decades later, that lovely young man with Downs inspired the title character in Losing August.
As for Sunset Beach, the dilapidated amusement park Augie calls home, it was inspired by Silver Beach in St. Joe, Michigan. I took the back cover photograph of Shadowland Ballroom in 1971 before it, the old boardwalk, and the wood-frame roller coaster were torn down.
Like every other character I write, Sunset Beach Amusement Park is not a reflection of reality, but a fiction drawn from imagination. Even the town of Edgewater is a fictionalized composite of memories of my youth in St. Joe. Yet, in this story, I am not kind in a depiction of a small town in 1965 White America. It serves the story and speaks to the times, not the town I grew up in.