Finding the Land Hungry Heart, Homebound Publications
2013 | 180 pages | Fiction| ISBN 978-1938846236 | Purchase | Kindle
Come to the confluence of the present and the 1960s. Caleb Dempster, a disillusioned refugee from that turbulent era makes his living operating a municipal landfill, dealing with the waste of a society he’d once strived to change. One night Dempster catches some teens climbing the landfill fence in the hope of spotting a bear that’s feeding on the garbage. The kids’ interest in Dempster’s past, including a wild cross-country hitchhiking trip, enables him to see some value in experiences that had only tormented him with disappointment. Following some hardball small town politics and violence, the kids enable Dempster to triumph by finding value in what he had thought was a wasted youth of unfulfilled promises.
“Finding the Last Hungry Heart is a poignant story of nostalgia, wisdom, and change that celebrates the innocence of youth, the courage necessary to live through it, and the kind of camaraderie that reaches across generations.”
—John L. Stanizzi, author of Ecstasy Among Ghosts
“Poetry, parable, prophesy, and flashback, song of sorrow and song of hope, Leff has given us a captivating story that beautifully summarizes both the hopes and the legacy of the generation of love.”
—Connecticut State Historian Walter Woodward
