Forest Hills Author Pens Book About Growing Up

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — A memoir detailing a Forest Hills author's coming of age was released Sunday.

Bob Brody's Playing Catch with Strangers: A Family Guy (Reluctantly) Comes of Age chronicles its author's attempts to reach "something approximating adulthood." A loving husband and a "trial-and-error" parent, Brody talks about his transformation into a mature family man.

The book also celebrates his life in New York City, with an emphasis on Queens where he has lived since 1977.

The figures in the novel include Brody's workaholic father, his disabled mother, his magnanimous mother-in-law and his son and daughter.

Brody recounts a reunion with his mother after a decade-long estrangement and confesses to a minor crime against his father.

He recalls a man with a gun running towards him on Austin Street and how, at that moment, he was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to save his family.

However, not all the stories in the book are so somber.

Brody recalls how he almost ruined his relationship with his future wife on the first date over an obnoxious comment and how an hilariously heroic attempt to protect his family on a stormy ferry ride turned out to be futile.

“In this winning memoir, Bob Brody wears his heart on both sleeves, along with a chip on both shoulders," said Goodfellas' author Nicholas Pileggi.

"He’s every inch a die-hard New Yorker, equally tender and tough. Give the guy credit: He gets stabbed five weeks after moving into the city, but sticks around for the next 41 years.”

As the son of two deaf parents, Brody says he became a writer "To find [his] voice. To be heard. And to be understood."

Playing Catch with Strangers: A Family Guy (Reluctantly) Comes of Age was released Sunday by Heliotrope Books and is available in paperback for $17 and as an e-book for $7.99.

Lead image courtesy of Perlman PR