Gerard Van der Leun loved the look and feel of books, and so his book will be available in paperback and hardcover versions.
Gerard wanted the book to be called THE NAME IN THE STONE after one of his most popular essays, about his uncle who had died as a young man in World War II and was lost at sea, and Gerard’s accidental discovery of a monument in New York’s Battery Park with his uncle’s – and therefore his own – name on it.
Nearly all of the forty-six essays in the book first appeared on Van der Leun’s blog American Digest over a period of twenty years. Some are relatively short but most are expansive, telling stories from Gerard’s eventful and colorful life as well as stories told to him by others he met along the way. Among them are reflections on love, loss, family, friends, hippie life in the Sixties, religion, and his near-death experience; plus his trademark humor on such varied subjects as fat cats, fake apologies, childhood, and the perfect chocolate chip cookie. Each essay has an accompanying color photo.
Gerard describes standing with the crowd on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade on 9/11 as the World Trade Center came down, and racing to keep ahead of the advancing cloud of debris. He had grown up in the town of Paradise in California and had returned to live there in 2014 in order to help his centenarian mother, which meant that on November 8, 2018, Gerard was awakened in the early morning hours by the smell of smoke and had to flee for his life from the fire that destroyed the town and all his possessions save a few things he had hurriedly placed in his car: his computer, his cat, and some clothing. Several essays about that experience are in the book, too.
Gerard also wrote about politics on his blog, but he didn’t want political essays to be in the book. He wanted THE NAME IN THE STONE to deal with universals, with things that lasted. This book is a little piece of himself, the light and entertaining as well as the deep and contemplative.