Being Clem virtual book launch

“There’s 2,341 miles from Chicago to the San Francisco Bay.  And even if you happened to catch a ride in one of those ’44 Silver Streak Pontiacs with the shiny front grilles that look like big ole teeth smiling back at you, and drove as fast as the wind, it’d still take you about a week to get there.  2, 341 miles is a lot of miles.  But it ain’t so far when an explosion that happens in San Francisco, California, lands right smack-dab in your lap here in Chicago. …Later I found it wasn’t just my daddy who was killed in that explosion in San Francisco.  There were 320 other nay men too.  The Port Chicago Disaster, they called it.  But didn’t nobody bother to count the four of us, Clarisse, Annette, Momma, and me, here in Chicago.   Because that explosion that happened 2, 341 miles away just about ripped us apart too. “

And so begins the story of Clemson Thurber Junior, his bossy, older sisters and his grieving mother Cecille, all trying to find a way to cope after the death of Clem’s father.  We first saw Clem in Finding Langston, as a reluctant bully, who became Langston’s first friend in Chicago.  He appeared again in Leaving Lymon as the loyal, affable friend to Lymon.  But the question remained, who was Clem really?  A bully or a kind-hearted friend?  The truth is, even Clem isn’t sure, and in Being Clem he is grappling with trying to discover the truth of who he is in the shadow of a father of who was strong and brave.  He is afraid to admit to everyone around him that he is terrified of the very thing he is supposed to love, swimming, like his sailor dad.  But how can you be strong, and brave if you are afraid?   These are the questions Clem will hope to answer with the help of his family, Langston, Lymon, Errol, his Milwaukee cousins along with new characters who help Clem discover what it means to just be Clem.