My Goodreads and Amazon review of Leave the Kid Alone: A Fractured Remembrance (Rated 5) – Inn-side Story. In his coming-of-age memoir, Leave the Kid Alone: A Fractured Remembrance, Steve Zettler offers an entertaining mix of youthful innocence overlaid with adult wit. In short, pithy chapters, the book zips along as quickly as childhood itself. Young Stevie’s (mis)perceptions about the world are at once hilariously off target and astutely on the mark. Growing up in a family-owned inn in rural Pennsylvania, Zettler is exposed to people from widely different backgrounds. What he doesn’t learn from his tough Navy veteran father and outspoken schoolteacher mother, he learns from the guests and staff, who range from the New York City celebrities who come to “shack up” for the weekend to the hardened “stew bums” who man the kitchen, pretty waitresses, and street-wise bartenders. As a novelist myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page, I admire Zettler’s skill bringing each character to life on the page. Like many children with families in the hospitality business, he was expected to work. Much as he missed playing with his classmates, he recognized the “silver lining” of his position. Literally, he got paid. Metaphorically, he learned things that enriched his knowledge beyond that of his peers. The closed world of the inn opened Zettler to the bigger world of human experience that is captured in his endearing and entertaining recollections.
The world of an inn seen through a 7-year-old’s eyes
Why writers read: “There is no friend as loyal as a book.” – Ernest Hemingway
