Natural Shocks

Book excerpt: Natural Shocks, the first in the autobiographical six-part book series called Hindsights, covers the childhood of Stan Erisman, a gregarious American boy, in a Chicago suburb called Oak Park in the 1950s. Stan’s parents are naturally loving, but the strictness of their beliefs and the pressure from the Plymouth Brethren, a Christian Fundamentalist sect, compels them to heap layer after layer of religious indoctrination upon their three sons, of whom Stan is the youngest. Struggling to live a normal life, Stan is forced to become an outsider, so as not to have to mingle with “unbelievers” – the rest of the human race. Triggered by his passionate interest in the Indians, Stan begins to question the way things are done, both out there in the world and within his religious community. Entering puberty in the 1960s, Stan begins to have serious doubts about what he’s been told to believe by the leaders, both political and religious. And when he sees how his brother’s attempts to exercise greater freedom are crushed, doubt turns to determination not to let that happen to him – ever. By his mid-teens, Stan has begun to rebel, as has his fellow sufferer and best friend, Norm. Together, the two youths hatch a careful plan to escape into the unknown world of San Francisco in 1964. And Stan has begun to paint.