The time: The mid-1970s. The Place: California's Monterey Peninsula.
Sixteen-year-old musician Serge Durand never knew his father. Now, he's just been abandoned by his mother, left entirely on his own with nothing but a guitar and a fractured sense of identity. Forced into premature adulthood as an "abbreviated minor," Serge is thrust into the underbelly of the California coast - a decadent, sun-bleached world populated by wild teens, aging hippies, and desperate hustlers.
While the counterculture spins its wheels in a haze of drugs and broken promises, Serge's eyes stay fixed 3,000 miles away. His Mecca is New York City, where the raw, electric fury of the underground punk music scene is exploding. He doesn't just want to escape; he wants to be a part of the movement and become a music legend in his own right.
But dreams don't pay rent. Trapped in a cycle of dead-end jobs and nonexistent bank balances, Serge watches his future drift further out of reach. When a sudden firing leaves him completely broke with rent due in seven days, the coastal paradise becomes a prison. Refusing to succumb to the apathy around him, Serge delivers a desperate ultimatum: pull off a miracle and get to New York in one week, or fall permanently into the abyss of homelessness and despair.
Abbreviated Minor is a darkly humorous, gritty, and deeply moving literary novel. It strips away the nostalgic romanticism of the 1970s to reveal the jagged rebel heart of a young artist fighting against poverty, abandonment, and time itself.