Life's too precious to be careful with. Kazimierz Baranski achieved that level of self-awareness during the last months of his 77-year-long life.
Fathers and Sons and Other Village Idiots is partly a story of generational divide, but it is so much more. Kazimierz is on a journey not only through turbulent 1969 America but also through decades of the Polish American immigrant experience in South Brooklyn.
He's a poor immigrant in a rich man's country, continually being sent into the breach by the powers that be. Nevertheless, he was happy in America, content with his lot in life, and devoted to his religion. All that changed when God took his wife away from him.
After Marysia's death, Kaz exercised his free will, an inalienable tenet of his Catholic faith, and rejected God and the church. As he enters 1969, he comes to realize that in order to join his wife in heaven, he needs to reconcile with God and do it soon. Foolishly for Kaz, it still must be on his terms. He refuses to be extorted by religion to behave. Obediently going to church once a week and not eating meat on Fridays, wasn't going to be his recipe to redemption. On New Year's Day 1969, he resolves to find a good that needs doing.
In 1969 New York City, there are civil rights protests, campus takeovers, war moratoriums, and gay rights riots. Mobsters, both in and out of uniform, rule the streets of his South Brooklyn neighborhood. He knows he needs help. He prays for a guardian angel and discovers they are all around him.
Kaz embarks on his journey by writing a winter haiku for his dead wife. During his quest, he pounders the wisdoms of a 18th century writer, Ivan Turgenev, and a 20th-century Catholic radical, Dorothy Day. He encounters underdogs defying reason and resisting power. They include a centuries-old Polish Catholic icon, Battle of Brooklyn warriors, Warsaw Ghetto and Stonewall Inn rioters, Vietnam War protesters, and the worst team to ever play major league baseball, the New York Mets. All lead him to a cold beach where he needs to make a choice.
Fathers and Sons and Other Village Idiots is a historical fiction taken from the newspapers of 1969. It's a literary tale of the protagonist battling his psychological demons. It's an inspirational story of a soul opposing devilish odds for a heavenly desire.
