Floating Along in This Hydroplane

by Scott Christopher Beebe

In Scott Christopher Beebe's fifth book, he writes candidly about his relationship with his father, a hard-living, hard-loving, six-time-married, substance abusing, tragic, hilarious, and real deal character named Chester Winfield (Peter, Repeat) Beebe, Jr. Writing with heartfelt, grandiose doses of comedy and rippling, shimmering waves of darkness, Mr. Beebe sets out to capture the spirit of his father, and in turn finds relatability of his own character that they in turn share both in winning as well as in greatly flawed ways. The action found in FLOATING ALONG IN THIS HYDROPLANE skirts between the author's native midwestern states of Illinois and Wisconsin and his father's native land of Rhode Island, and they discover that in both places they feel at once accepted as well as bearing a likeness much likened to aliens.

548 pages, Paperback

Published October 31, 2017

Reviews

[Florence Osmund · Rating 5 out of 5]

How can you not read any further given this opening sentence? “My eighteenth summer was spent in the same way that any other ungrateful, disrespectful, bitter-beyond-their-years, socially awkward, athletically inept, clumsy, oversexed, underworked, underutilized, oversleeping, overeating, malfunctioning, out-of-control, rebellious, clueless, reckless, fearful, trusting, giving, forgiving, nurturing, listening, observant, trust-fund shithead does with theirs.” How the author managed to use so many distinctive adjectives in one sentence, I don’t know, but I get it. Throughout the rest of the book, he beautifully and poignantly tells the story in his own unique writing style--with no regard for convention, completely unfiltered, and blatantly unapologetically. Perhaps that is why I admire Beebe’s work.

It is the story of the author’s relationship with his father, a man who was in and out of his life at the most critical of times, a man whose influence shaped the author into the person he is today on so many levels. Perhaps this quote from the book sums it up best. “The way in which we were most similar was found at the base of our being with our humanistic, compassionate, misunderstood understanding of the world at large and its players around us, for which neither of us would have exchanged a single moment in spite of the detriment that it caused us.” Quite insightful.

This is not a meticulously-written book that has gone through multiple levels of editing. It’s raw, recklessly descriptive, and straight from the author’s heart. Very interesting family dynamics. Worth the read.