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Beyond repair : living in a fractured state

In 2011, my family was in a major car accident. We were hit head-on by a man in the throes of a heart attack. It took three years to recover from our injuries, and a couple more to deal with the aftereffects of trauma. When I finally returned to the world - as father and husband, friend and brother, writer and citizen - it became clear that our society was in its own traumatized state - reeling from the string of police shootings of unarmed African Americans, stunned by yet one more mass shooting. The people around me were displaying all the signs of PTSD - jumpiness, irritability, numbness - and, concordantly, my interactions out in daily life were becoming more dysfunctional, at times downright hostile. Us against them. Red vs. blue. Black vs. white. Rich vs. poor. That we were living in a progressive town inside a conservative county in the Mountain South only made things more volatile. I decided that if we were all living in a fractured society no longer recognizable, then it was up to me to re-engage in it. I would enter into encounters with people as conscious as possible of the potential divides and misunderstandings between us. I started with my neighborhood and town, then moved out into the counties around us, then traveled further out into the country. My goal: to connect.

In my father's footsteps

William Matthews was a much-admired, award-winning poet and teacher who lived hard and died suddenly in 1997 at the age of 55. He was a jazz fan, a wit and racanteur, a connoisseur of fine food and wine, and a thrice-married womanizer. This memoir pays homage to a charismatic father as the son struggles to step out from his considerable shadow. In examining his father's life and death, Sebastian Matthews explores his own chaotic past. A child of divorce, he was shuttled throughout his boyhood between parents and many geographies. In a confusing symbiotic time between Bill's marriages, the teenage son and his father "were roommates and drinking buddies - I took care of him; he parented me." Later came the son's wanderings and failed commitments. Finally, Sebastian learns to confront Bill's mixed legacy. Striving to emualte the best of that "sad, happy" man, he discovers new definitions of home, love and marriage.

Miracle day : mid-life songs