Why You Must: A San Francisco Saga

Set in the post-hippie era of the Dressed-for-Success 1980s, Why You Must: A San Francisco Saga offers a deftly interwoven series of intimate narratives addressing the eternal puzzle of why smart, talented, educated people so often fall short of achieving their fondest ambitions of artistic glory. Writers, actors, street performers, and stand-up comedians appear in this novel just as they were at the dawn of the Digital Revolution: being social without media and before anyone understood the coming cumulative impact of personal cell phones, desktop publishing, and the World Wide Web. Tragically originating in that same not-so-long-ago age was the AIDS epidemic, which extinguished so many of the brightest creative lights from a generation seeking freedom and fulfillment in “Baghdad-by-the-Bay.” Most profoundly, Why You Must explores the mysteriously fluid nature of friendship, love, and sex in a place and time when the social boundaries between “gay” and “straight” were beginning to blur, and recreations of the previous decade were starting to be recognized as life-wasting addictions. Funny and sad, guileless and wise, Why You Must is a uniquely told tale of aspiring human beings struggling to become the selves they dream of. Some can, many cannot, but all must at least try to follow their heart’s desires – or fail for lack of trying and “die with [their] music still inside.”