Dense, heady memoir, the first in a projected four-volume set, tracks the years Zabor spent getting involved with a spiritual commune in the '70s and caring for his dying parents in the 1980s. PW starred review.

Some time ago, Rafi Zabor sat down to write a brief account of 1986. gt;That was the year after his parents died, the year he intended to leave Brooklyn for good, buy a used car, and drive it across Europe back to his golden destination, Istanbul. But like Zabor's journey, this 'brief account' took on a direction of its own - through the shell of his father's childhood, via the music of John Coltrane, in the company of a raggle-taggle collection of chancers, dreamers, misfits and magicians. Sitting in the passenger seat, the reader is taken on a mad, exhilarating, beautiful drive, encountering life and death, and a little piece of what lies beyond.