Book: Son of Sisyphus

In the late 1960s, Bert Robbin is a recently appointed English teacher at P. Piper Hamelin JHS located in a suburb of New York City. At the ripe old age of 27, still searching for his first romance, Bert finds a barely affordable apartment of Lilliputian dimensions on the "swinging" fashionable upper eastside of Manhattan, where singles mingle and hopefully become doubles. Unable to rise to his parents' expectations of a career in law or medicine Bert is determined to succeed as a public schoolteacher. But the New York City Board of Education and P. Piper Hamelin are having difficulties of their own, challenging even for the most seasoned of pedagogues. The system is buffeted and befuddled by frequent teacher walkouts and minority unrest. Moreover, an overarching racial and social conflict arising from the frustrating and unwinnable war in Vietnam, tears at the fraying fabric of American Society. Bert is naive, often diffident and indecisive in this time of convulsive change. Nevertheless, Bert emerges Phoenix-like from the turmoil of his times with a new confident perception of himself and his mission.

This novel was written in real time within only a few years of the actual events which inspired the author to write this book.