It is not logical to hear such a melody
this late spring
when the rains are still cold.
I had to stop when it first came,
its beckoning unrecognizable
or too familiar.
How can the frozen earth not
crack
to such song?
How can the numb cardinal not
sing
to the first sun?
It was almost too late
the sound of the first rain drop.
I stopped only because it hurt.
That dark echo.
That flash of sound.
-Francisco X. Stork
March 29, 2010
This past week, I was invited to visit Holland by Lemniscaat, the Dutch publisher of Marcelo in the Real World. It was a particularly meaningful trip because my step father, Charlie Stork, was Dutch. There were many things about the trip that were touching and had an impact on me, but the one that sticks out the most in my mind was looking into the eyes of many Dutch people and seeing in there the same kind, bright, spark of life that I used to see in my father’s eyes. I met Charlie Stork when I was six years old and I lost him to an automobile accident when I was thirteen. It was too short a time but it was enough for me to be grateful, to recognize the influence that a father has on a son. Going to Holland at age 57 meant so much to me. I will never forget the in-depth interviews by reporters who had read Marcelo two or three times, the attentive faces of the children at the schools, the kind people at the bookstores who listened to my sales pitch. Thank you Lemniscaat for bringing me to the home of my father and letting me find my adoptive roots.
The Last Summer of the Death Warriors, my fourth novel, officially comes out today. I started to write Death Warriors only a few months after submitting the final draft for Marcelo in the Real World. Like the other books that I have written, the seed for this one had been inside of me for many years. The seed was simply this: two very different young men (one very philosophical and idealistic and the other one very emotional and phyisical) get involved in an adventure and are transformed by each other in the process. We are used to thinking of “adventure” as something that involves physical risk, but I wanted my adventure to be about spiritual risk, about the meaning of life and the risk of not finding it. I have to confess that it was a difficult book to write. Marcelo in the Real World was so well received that I wondered whether I would ever write another book like that. It took a couple of months of struggle to finally accept that this was a different book, with its own truths to tell and its own voice. Death Warriors is a deeply personal book. Personal not in the sense that it is autobiographical, but in the sense that I lived and suffered with Pancho and D.Q. as I wrote about them. I wish this book well on this day. May it touch readers as deeply as it touched me. Â
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