Local Author Rick Jebb Memoir Book Signing at Bobzbay Books
About the author:
Rick has been seriously writing since 2010, seeking a voice to speak of hopefulness and adaptation in the midst of uncertain times, learning how to be in the world but not of it. His writing includes poetry, essay and existential spiritual memoir focused on facing life’s challenges: discovery and development of spirituality, transcendence, class struggle, mental illness and substance abuse all of which he has experienced personally and as a father and a son.
Rick’s body of published work includes essays published in Ekstasis, Fathom, and the Boundary Waters’ Journal. He is currently working on a series of novel style memoirs dealing with challenging life stage transitions, the majesty of nature, the influence of culture and art, and the philosophy and strategy of socio-economic adaptation.
About the book (Mexican Sunset):
After the unexpected death of his thirty-eight-year-old stepfather, fourteen-year-old Rick embarks on a five-year journey that begins in the Midwest’s Edenic Driftless Area canoeing a mysterious wild river in eastern Iowa.
While embracing the idealism of the 1970s counterculture, he seeks to discover himself in pursuit of his escapism. Amidst the backdrop of reconstructing his deconstructed Christian faith, sharing adventures with friends, his interior conversation gives a glimpse into the author’s inner growth during these years. If anything kept him moving forward, it was the delusion of his magical thinking: his imagination and wanting, and the wandering search through the looking glass of his impressionistic mind, slicing through glacial meltwaters of northern forests in a canoe and other evocative childhood memories.
On Colorado’s high chaparral, just as he begins to reconcile his industrialist roots with his curious artist’s soul, Rick falls in love with a girl from Sinaloa, Mexico. After high school, he hitchhikes back and forth across the country, visiting old friends before returning to Mexico to find the girl. Traveling the back roads of Mexico with new friends, looking down from the top of an active volcano, and taking a dangerous acid trip at the edge of Cholula’s Great Pyramid, he comes to see his life’s trajectory reflected in the struggles of his ancestors and buried in the secrets of Mexico’s past.