A Stranger on the Planet

Adam Schwartz

Synopsis:

In the summer of 1969, Seth Shapiro is twelve years old, and the tumult of his family life plays out against the backdrop of the moon landing and Woodstock. Seth lives with his unstable mother, Ruth, his twin sister, Sarah, and his younger brother, Seamus, in a two-bedroom apartment in northern New Jersey. His father, a wealthy doctor, lives with his young French wife in a tenroom house and has no interest in Seth and his siblings. Seth is dying to escape from his mother's craziness and often suffocating love for her children, her marriage to a man she's known for two weeks, and his father's cold disregard. But over the next four decades, as his quest for happiness and fulfillment takes him from New Jersey to Chicago to Cambridge, Massachusetts, Seth becomes the keeper of his family's memories and secrets. At the same time, he isolates himself emotionally from all those who love him, especially his mother. But Ruth is also Seth's muse, and this ultimately enables him to find redemption, for both himself and his family.