Dear Great Book Guru, I was at the first Sunset Serenade of the summer last week - it was great! Larry Martone & Friends entertained a crowd of almost two hundred fans of all ages. During the night, I overheard some concertgoers mentioning a book they had read for their book club -a novel set in California and sprinkled with lots of references to music from the ‘80s. It sounded interesting - thoughts?  Sunset Serenade Fan

Dear Sunset Serenade Fan - I too love those concerts - every Thursday from 6 to 8pm you will find my friends and me cheering on our local musicians at Clifton Park. THE IMAGINED LIFE by Andrew Porter is the novel mentioned.  Steve Mills is a fifty-year-old who leaves his wife and young son to travel along the coast of California in an attempt to find out what happened to his father who disappeared in 1984 when Steve was twelve.  His wife cautions him that he might not be happy with what he discovers. The novel shifts back and forth between his life before and after his father’s disappearance.  He had been a brilliant, charismatic professor of literature whose life and career came to a devastating halt when he was denied tenure.  His increasingly erratic behavior doubtlessly contributed to this outcome, but in-fighting, jealous colleagues, and campus politics were also in play.  During his odyssey, Steve gets to talk to his father’s friends and enemies, and a story emerges of a very complicated man - a man Steve desperately misses. Throughout, he imagines what his life would have been like if his father had not disappeared.  A book suffused with music and memories of the time….  Recommended!