Over a dozen years ago, I began the research on what through various twists and turns would eventually become Wandering Boy. It was partially inspired by my grandfather Mickey Kern and his story of how he once walked through a park in the gathering twilight and saw a beautiful girl dancing on the grass. In short order, she became his wife. In much longer order, she became my grandmother (the birth of my father and his sister Grace inevitably came in between). She was the real Ida Derow who, aside from the name, bore absolutely zero resemblance to my heroine. She couldn’t cook. She definitely couldn’t chop wood. Instead, in her home I learned the mysteries of cigarette lighters, SenSen and frozen orange juice. In fairness, she did work a mean compost heap and had a splendid apple tree I loved to climb.
My grandfather, however, though he basically spent his whole working life in Brooklyn — and so far as I know never heard a single country song — was definitely the same irrepressible, self-made man as my hero. There was something extraordinary to me about an immigrant’s son who never went to college but still became a justice of the New York Supreme Court.
My writing has always been inspired by conjunctions: taking some interesting character and putting him or her in an even more interesting situation and sort of standing back. I had long known that the Bristol Sessions — also known as the Big Bang of Country Music — were instigated by a bunch of New Yorkers who drove south with the newest portable recording gear in their car. Suddenly I knew who else was in that car… and I just followed him for the next eighty years. I hope you will too.
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