Paterson Boy is a memoir told as a series of stories. Sometimes
laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes ironic, and sometimes filled with
heartache, Paterson Boy takes you on a journey that will make you
reflect on your own childhood with its many disparate pieces.
Collectively they are a rite-of-passage story with all the varied
emotions that would suggest, minus the drama of war, incest, or physical
abuse.
With a fresh, wise voice, Jerry Vis tells a marvelous story of the
freedom of childhood, its loss, and search for the path back to oneself.
It is also a tale of Paterson, NJ, as it starts to decline, of a
neighborhood that is an entire world for an only child born into a
blue-collar family just months before the start of WW II. It is a place
of family-owned stores and horse-drawn vendor wagons, of aunts and
uncles, grandparents, teachers, and friends. Jerry has an adoring mother
who provides a decade of loving security and the freedom to explore his
boyhood world on his own, and a remote father who comes in and out of
focus in Jerry's life until he dramatically emerges center stage, along
with a confusing mix of God, religion, and alcohol.
At the same time, other family members scheme, lure, cajole, and bribe
Jerry in an attempt to shape him into what each thinks he ought to be,
and in an attempt to save him from his father. Influenced by those
around him, Jerry must somehow learn to find a way to become himself.
