Down to a Sunless Sea

Down to a Sunless Sea, Mathias B. Freese, Wheatmark Book Publishing, 2007

This is a group of short stories, some previously published, on a variety of subjects, but with an overall, general theme.

There are a couple of stories about growing up in post-World War II Brooklyn. In one of those stories, a couple of kids want to set up an after-school shoeshine stand, to bring in a few dollars. The father of one of the boys totally forbids such a thing. Until the son is old enough to get a job, the father believes, the only thing on his mind should be education.

The main character of another story chops the hands of former Argentine dictator Juan Peron right off his corpse, and steals them. What is it like to have a body that is half normal, and half disabled by cerebral palsy? The title of another story is "Arnold Schwarzenegger's Father was a Nazi." During a trip to the beach at Coney Island, a father teaches his young son to swim by taking him into deep water (for the son),
bodily throwing him into deeper water, then forcing the son to find his own way back to shore.

As you may have guessed, these are not happy, optimistic stories, but they are very good stories. These are short, almost psychological case studies of troubled people. The author is a psychotherapist and social worker, so he knows what he is talking about. This book is easy to read, and very much worth checking out.