Alex Austin's Blog - Posts Tagged "drowning"

In February, 2016, The Permanent Press will be publishing my novel Nakamura Reality. All novels emerge from experience, and I'd like to share what inspired me to write the novel.

The closest friend of my son Chris is his identical twin Alex, but during Chris’s first years of elementary school in Los Angeles, a Japanese boy named Hideki ran a close second. Hideki’s sudden return to Japan confounded Chris, whose first response was to demand that we make him Japanese. Fifteen years later, Chris journeyed to Japan to live and work, separated for the first time from his inseparable twin.

In Tokyo he immersed himself in Japanese life, including joining a judo club, competing in numerous tournaments and earning a black belt. He also met and married—in a traditional Japanese ceremony—a Japanese woman named Masumi. When they returned to the U.S. with their son, they lived in our home for several years. Their stay was my introduction to many aspects of Japanese culture which included a polite reticence on Masumi’s part that conveyed much more than she actually said. Out of my son’s fascination with Japan and my efforts to decode Masumi’s intentions, a story was forming, though still unclear, like a morning swimmer coming out of the fog.

When my sons were somewhat younger than the twins Hitoshi and Takumi of Nakamura Reality, I took them to a beach in the aftermath of a Pacific storm. Though the waves were huge, I gave into their pleas and let them go into the surf and immediately regretted my decision. In their search for catchable waves, they reached a point where the currents seemed to take control, pulling them out to sea. I shouted, ran into the surf, and started a hopeless swim but was immediately knocked down by a breaker. Getting to my feet to try again I glimpsed them atop a wave. The sea was carrying them back to shore. Meeting them in the surf, there were no pleas to paddle out again for they too had been scared. They hadn’t felt guilty, though I did.

The memory of that day’s terror and the lingering guilt I felt would weave its way through a cultural experience to inspire and shape Nakamura Reality.