Cloudbreak, California: a memoir

One day during his ninth-grade Speech class Kelly Daniels' outlaw, soul-surfer father appears at school unannounced and pulls the boy from class. Speeding down the freeway, Daniels' father admits that he has been involved in a crime, but he does not remember how it happened. He'd been up for days on cocaine and booze, he explains, and the next thing he knew he woke up in jail with a bad feeling. It was almost a relief when the guard told him he'd killed his cousin Barkley, a drug kingpin of sorts. "I'm sorry to lay this on you," he tells the stunned boy, "but I'm not going to be around to watch your back. Barkley has a son your age...and this kid might come after you someday. You're going to have to learn to look after yourself." A few days later, the father skips bail and flees the country. "Forget about him," everybody says. But the boy doesn't forget. Someday, he believes, they'll find each other, the fugitive father and the dreamy son, and together they'll surf perfect, far-away waves. The reality, he learns when his father is captured a decade later, is less glamorous. Hard-hitting and off-beat, Cloudbreak, California is a coming-of-age story, a father and son drama, a cautionary tale, and a travel adventure. At its core, Daniels has created an admirable reflection on the power of imagination to transform us into who we are meant to be.