“Every Other Weekend” is a captivating memoir that explores the challenges and self-discovery of growing up with two fathers in 1950s L.A., offering a vivid glimpse into the complexities of family. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

Forty years ago, Dorris Halsey, a family friend and literary agent representing luminaries like Aldous Huxley, Ring Lardner, Henry Miller, and Upton Sinclair, urged me to write about my biological father and my stepfather. She saw a story there, but I was too busy practicing law. Then I became a judge and was too busy hearing cases. What’s more, I didn’t think my life was exciting enough that people would want to read about it. Dorris passed in 2006, and I dropped all thoughts about the project. But years later, at the Community of Writers (f/k/a Squaw Valley Writers Workshop), an editor urged me to put both men on the page and light up the times in which they lived: the Southern California of the 1950s and early 1960s. The light went on, and I decided to “compare and contrast” my two fathers, Gerald and Stan. The result was Every Other Weekend.    

I appreciated the candid nature with which you told your story. What was the hardest thing for you to write about?

Despite my love and gratitude for both fathers, I had to discuss their faults, of which there were plenty. Writing about my father’s second marriage and his subsequent affair proved difficult. While I don’t blame him for the tryst—his mistress provided him with needed warmth and support—I found it confusing to be dragged into the affair. As for Stan, I felt obligated to show how, in a flash, he could pivot from peace to anger, even violence. To this day these memories hurt, but I felt an obligation to include them.

What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your book?

To paraphrase Leo Tolstoy, families are complicated for their own reasons. They face their own unique demons, but their troubles don’t necessarily rule out successful child raising. My stepsiblings on both sides turned out well, and I think I did too. I hope a reader will take away the story of two men who tried their best.

What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?

Every Other Weekend focuses on my blended families in the Southern California of the 1950s and early 1960s. My next project will turn the lens outward and focus on life in the Southland during the same time period. Many consider those years California’s “golden era.” Maybe they were, but I hope to show the details of what it  was really like to be a child of purported privilege during those years. I am hoping to finish the project next year.

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