As many of you know or might guess after reading it, both narrators, Joseph and Pedro, are based on “JP’, my actual civilian name. But Pedro is the main vehicle for the semi-autobiographical aspect of the novel. Likewise, the character of Nadia Czonka is a depiction of my first wife, Aubray Tomkinson.
We were “exuberantly wed” (inside joke) in October 1999 in our temporarily adopted hometown of Bisbee, Arizona –disguised in the novel as the fictional Caches Notch, New Hampshire. I did not have a camera of my own for the vast period of time between high school and the emergence of smartphones (Aubray did, though we seemed to use it sporadically), so snapshots of us from this time period are limited. But there are enough to help you put a couple faces with the names.
(Clockwise from top L) The day after the wedding in the hills outside Bisbee; from the honeymoon in San Carlos, Mexico; probably taken in 2001 at Aubray’s sister’s place in Sacramento; a couple rare peaceful moments before the wedding in BIsbee; an early photo, around October 1998, taken by Aubray’s mother at her home in Pennsylvania.
Some photos from Cayucos in 2001. Aubray and Eloise, who came to us from a pug rescue program in Santa Barbara. She ended up being re-rescued by another group in Massachusetts in 2002 when life got too chaotic in the post 9/11 aftermath and wound up with a wonderful home. This is the actual bungalow apartment at 432A Old Creek Road, and the front door mentioned prominently in the novel. The “postage stamp-sized swatch of Pacific Ocean” we could see from the road, and our poor beat up Honda Civic.
Here are a couple views of the avocado farm in the foothills east of Cambria that lured us away from Bisbee in 2000. In writing this as a cross-country move from New Hampshire, I combined elements of the previous move that brought us to Arizona from the Northeast with the actual trip from Bisbee to the Central Coast. The avocado farm as depicted in the novel might have seemed too crazy to be part of our true story, but I can assure you it was.
The cliffs at Pismo Beach, scene of pivotal conversation in Act V
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