Along for the Ride

A professional musician in his teens, Stephen Marcus confronted the wiles of adult life—open bars and closed hearts—before his time. Interweaving fiction and memoir, he crafted his own coming-of-age medley in Along for the Ride . These short, unflinching pieces take us from post-war suburban mob hangouts to the tumultuous 1960s and ’70s; from memories of a childhood soulmate to an immigrant Jewish uncle with a secret; from relapses on the beach to allegories of good and evil in a rehab center. The unique collection culminates with a romantic novella that features shades of organized crime, musical passion, and the far-away emerging state of Israel. Buckle up for safety!

“Fascinating characters doing unpredictable things make this Steve Marcus collection a great read.”
—Marc Blatte, Author of Humpty Dumpty Was Pushed

“ Along for the Ride by Stephen Marcus adroitly mixes chapters farmed as mini-memoirs with stark, pulverizing short stories. This bold structure presents a unified, book-length meditation on the agonies and the periodic bliss of one man’s youth and his urban adulthood unfolding, as America’s soundtrack evolved from Doo Wop to Woodstock and then Hip-Hop. Race, music, and the traumas of alcoholism are recurring motifs that remind this reader of Jean Toomer’s Cane and Ernest Hemingway’s experimental debut In Our Time. ”
—M. J. Moore, author of Herself (A Novel of Summer 1962) and Mario Puzo: An American Writer’s Quest