Richard Rossi's Stick Man

"The best coming-of age novel since 'Catcher In the Rye'..."

(Literary Review Journal)

Stick Man is a coming-of-age story about a boy named Jeremiah Young who grows up in a bohemian household: "My childhood in Pittsburgh was one of extremes. First loves hung like photographs on the walls of my subconscious. They lingered there in my memory to battle their antithesis - Stick Man. I didn't think I'd make it to adulthood alive because Stick Man wanted to kill me."

Jeremiah Young is an imaginative prodigy. He paints and plays guitar. His father is a bi-polar jazz guitarist and his mother is a pianist who keeps the family secrets. She yells at Jeremiah and wants him to visit "God's house" with her. When Jeremiah visits Saint Joseph's Catholic Church for the first time, he has to leave early because he's frightened by the bloody man on the cross. He looks for God and finds the devil instead. This is the beginning of his idiosyncratic religious journey: "I gazed at the man on the sticks with nails stuck into his flesh. My eyes were riveted to the blood....When we exited the sanctuary, I looked up and saw the cross. The beams seemed to reach for me. For a moment, I was transfixed..." That night, Jeremiah has a nightmare of the beams of the crucifix manifesting into a man. Stick Man. When he wakes from the nightmare, he has marks on his stomach.

Jeremiah believes true love is the force to vanquish evil. He meets his first love, a girl he calls "Angel." When he's with Angel, his nightmares stop. She inspires him to write songs and awakens something in him that he can't live without. He experiences good dreams for the first time: "Her lips were wet. I was dizzy. She cradled my face in her hands.Time slipped away..." They ride the rollercoaster at West View Park, the local amusement park.

After the summer, Angel becomes cold towards him. The nightmares of Stick Man return to his dreams. Her departure remains clouded in mystery. A ghost visits him and tells him to find Angel again. He searches for her, believing she's the best antidote to Stick Man.

His journey brings him face to face with Stick Man and his search for his lost Angel in an effort to come full circle with his past. Jeremiah has dynamic interplay with religion - and the gradual, ultimate reassessment of his beliefs. He experiences his strong ties to his dysfunctional family and his unbending drive to make art. As he reaches his twenty-first birthday, he discovers the startling truth about Angel, God, and Stick Man.