Chasing Joy under a Catholic Moon

Chasing Joy under a Catholic Moon is a riotous Coming of Age memoir, complete with a colorful cast of characters, who travel from adolescence to adulthood against the backdrop of Long Island in the Sixties and Seventies. The story begins when America was young, when we looked up to presidents, God was in charge, and TV dads came home in suits and ties. Growing up in a large Catholic family, Becker chronicles its joys and tensions before turning a humorous eye on the fruitless efforts of the Catholic school system to suppress the growing allure of Rock-n-Roll, free love, James Bond and Raquel Welch. Shifting into high gear, his tale takes us at breakneck speed over the expressway of Long Island from New York City to the Hamptons, and back again, while the cars get faster, the bikinis smaller, the hair longer, and the radio plays way too loud. Years of Catholic upbringing shrink in the rearview mirror as we ride shotgun through binge-drinking, hair-brained ideas, fights (and quicker flights from fights), head-over-heels first love, a life lost, and a love lost. Chronicling an age when we knew everything - until we didn't. Becker's journey careens past a blur of exits on the expressway to perdition, until he spins off the road and discovers, when he least expected it, a pathway to joy and redemption.