“Clearly Now, The Rain is a wonderfully seamless story that orbits around a young man’s passion for a tragic young woman. But no matter how strong the devotion, no matter how intense the commitment, this memoir is a disturbing confirmation of how the power of addiction all too often overwhelms even the greatest love. Hastings writes from the heart, with unnerving honesty, and a remarkable sense of compassion.”
- James Brown, author of The Los Angeles Diaries and This River
“Clearly Now, The Rain is an unflinching account of how it feels to be young and flirting with the abyss in America. The narrator’s observations as he and his friends ride rough across the U.S.A., all pulled to orbit around their friend, lover, and lost soul, Serala, are also an investigation into the dangerously different ways that people respond to addiction. This is an elegy, yes, as if told by a boy who began his quest tutored by Kerouac’s ghost, but became, on this hard road, a man schooled in love by the spirit of the Dalai Lama.”
- Rachel Rose, author of Giving My Body to Science and Notes on Arrival and Departure
I met Serala Advani while visiting the college where she was enrolled in 1996. She was drawn together like a bundle of sticks on a desk chair in pajama pants even as the poisonous Southern California sun set over her shoulder. She leaked Marlboro smoke from her nose and stared me down. I was frightened and thrilled and could not have said why. I entered the same school the following year.
Memoir/Elegy, forthcoming in 2013, from ECW Press.
