Friends of Montclair Library

Join us next Tuesday, January 27, 2015 at 6:30pm for an Author Talk with Joshua Safran.

Local author Joshua Safran will be discussing his critically-acclaimed memoir, Free Spirit: Growing Up on the Road and Off the Grid. The book, chronicling his childhood on the dark side of the Age of Aquarius, has been called a “beautiful, powerful memoir…reminiscent of David Sedaris’s and Augusten Burroughs’s best work: introspective, hilarious, and heartbreaking” (Publishers Weekly starred review).

Born to lesbian witches in a Haight-Ashbury commune, Mr. Safran was four years old when his mother took him away from the San Francisco counterculture scene, determined to protect him from the threats of nuclear war and Ronald Reagan. Together they embarked on a journey to find a utopia they could call home, hitchhiking for thousands of miles across the American West, befriending strange and remarkable people, and living in vans, buses, and even an ice cream truck. Together they endured the elements and Joshua’s violent alcoholic Salvadorian stepfather, and against all odds, Joshua found his way to law school. In Free Spirit, Safran tells the harrowing, yet wryly funny story of his childhood chasing the perfect life off the grid – and how they survived the imperfect one they found instead.

Safran is an author, attorney, and nationally recognized advocate for victims of domestic violence. His seven-year legal odyssey to free a wrongfully-imprisoned battered woman from prison was featured in the award-winning Sundance and Oprah Winfrey Network film, “Crime After Crime.”

Copies of Free Spirit will be available for purchase and signing, courtesy of A Great Good Place for Books. This is a free event.