A Part of My Soul: Sequel to A Song in the Park (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781460991855)

I was born on the banks of the Amazon River and raised by a Kaiapo wet-nurse while my mother conducted medical research and taught the Kaiapo children how to play the violin. After growing up with my fellow rain forest natives and a long bout of malaria, I went on to get my degree in rocket science at the University of Uganda (U of U). To this day, I have not gotten a rocket off the ground. Presently, I'm trying to raise money to return to the Amazon to show gratitude to my surrogate mother, whom I've not seen in all these years. She had always wanted a car hood to use as an awning over the door to her hut. I finally found one, on a 1973 Cadillac, in a wrecking yard on a two-lane highway just south of Knoxville, Tennessee. Today, I take great satisfaction in spending time with my wife, in writing, and in telling lies. My earliest memories, at least those that are still fairly clear, are of those initial stages of puberty, when a boy begins to notice things about himself that are changing, when all of a sudden he realizes there's more to his body than a place to put Band-Aids. I noticed these same things about the other boys in the village, as we ran and played and wrestled together and threw sticks at the monkeys. Hmm, I thought . . . what had been a nondescript and easy-to-ignore anomaly had become the center of attention. The other boys my age had these odd shaped, rather impractical danglings between their legs, too, whereas the girls did not! Somewhere in the back of my youthful mind, I knew this curious centerpiece must be used for more than taking aim in a peeing contest. Seems young boys have a way of figuring these things out, especially when one of the girls sits him down and gives him a lecture on the birds and bees. (Why they always seem so far ahead of us, I haven't determined). Still, there were questions.