R.S. Gompertz

“Life’s Big Zoo” started off as a memoir and, like most memoirs, quickly turned to fiction. But, sure, some of the adventures and observations of a precocious kid growing up between the shadow of the holocaust and the bright lights of the sixties are close to home. I was too young to really participate in the sixties, which is why I remember them, but I was definitely old enough to feel both the fear and exhilaration of the times.

I'll let my precocious twelve-going-on-thirteen year-old protagonist answer this:

"I’m halfway to thirteen and 1968 is already the craziest year ever. Rigged elections, H-bombs, riots, rock and roll. My rock star brother might end up in Vietnam and The Monkees TV show just got cancelled.

So much for flower power.

Should I tell my grandmother that our weird neighbor is an ex-Nazi? Nana survived Dachau and deserves a quiet life which, so far, I haven’t provided.

I may be the dumbest kid in smart class, but I have a really big idea: I’m going to return to the scene of the crime and avenge Nana’s lost family.

Garage bands, G-men, Germans and Jews. Laurel Canyon, where the nuts roll uphill. If the future of the free world depends on me, please accept my apology in advance.

Among the many wise things Nana tells me, one that rings true time and again is that God keeps a big zoo. In the summer of 1968 I joined the menagerie."