If Sex in the City Isn’t Enough, Try Sex in Chicago
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A journey that commences in the years before the Second World War with a young child and ends in 1955 is the premise of the second book by 74-year-old Mark Lichterman, a professional chimney sweep who also writes novels.
“Becoming” is a novel that will remind many of us of ourselves, back in the times when God’s most mysterious creation was the opposite sex, says Lichterman.
It’s a novel “about life, and the sometimes funny, sometimes sad, day-to-day things that stir the memories of our lives,” the author says. “Remember when, as a people, we loved America and showed it? Then you might be ready for a nostalgic, funny, romantic, sexually charged novel.”
The tale begins with young Mitchie in an ethnically diverse neighborhood on the west side of Chicago.
“Becoming” guides the reader through Mitchie’s formative years, when at age 16 he lies about his age and enlists in the National Guard, “’cause girls dig guys in uniform.”
Soon finding himself caught up in the Korean War, Mitchell’s life unfolds in a series of nostalgic, comical, romantic, sad and funny sexual situations.
The story ends when Mitchell turns 21. And, just as in real life, the growth of the youth we see every day is so subtle that we do not notice the changes in them, so it is with Mitchell.
Local Chicago readers empathize with Mitchell and his growing pains.
“You just know that the author either lived next door or maybe on the next block, ’cause that’s the way things were growing up in the late ’30s, ’40s and into the ’50s,” said David Wilkins of Newbury Park.
“There was no TV showing things or a computer to Google what a boy needs to know — it was just day-to-day wonderment and exasperation to face,” Wilkins said. “The story was so close to my younger years that I started to bet myself that he would add other happenings of my life, and he often did.”
Bonnie Northcott of Westlake Village said Lichterman has a way of “making you feel everything his characters are going through… I wish this had been published when I was growing up, when times were much less threatening.”
“Becoming” is also about growing up, and learning about how young men and women deal with each other, said D.V. Cunningham of Westlake Village.
“But it’s also accepting that your parents are human,” Cunningham added. “These subjects will go on untill the end of time. Mark is wonderfully adept at revealing to women how their husbands and sons think. And it’s nice to know that they are just as scared and inquisitive about us as we are about them.”
Lichterman says he was inspired to write “Becoming” after he completed his first book, “The Climbing Boy.” “I found that I really enjoyed writing… one word led to another and more than 22 years and 293,718 words later, not counting four complete rewrites, we have what I call semi-fiction, or faction.”
He hopes that “Becoming” will inspire “the recall of youth, the remembrance of what so many of us forget over time.”
Ford Expedition Suspension and Air Shocks
A journey that commences in the years before the Second World War with a young child and ends in 1955 is the premise of the second book by 74-year-old Mark Lichterman, a professional chimney sweep who also writes novels.
“Becoming” is a novel that will remind many of us of ourselves, back in the times when God’s most mysterious creation was the opposite sex, says Lichterman.
It’s a novel “about life, and the sometimes funny, sometimes sad, day-to-day things that stir the memories of our lives,” the author says. “Remember when, as a people, we loved America and showed it? Then you might be ready for a nostalgic, funny, romantic, sexually charged novel.”
The tale begins with young Mitchie in an ethnically diverse neighborhood on the west side of Chicago.
“Becoming” guides the reader through Mitchie’s formative years, when at age 16 he lies about his age and enlists in the National Guard, “’cause girls dig guys in uniform.”
Soon finding himself caught up in the Korean War, Mitchell’s life unfolds in a series of nostalgic, comical, romantic, sad and funny sexual situations.
The story ends when Mitchell turns 21. And, just as in real life, the growth of the youth we see every day is so subtle that we do not notice the changes in them, so it is with Mitchell.
Local Chicago readers empathize with Mitchell and his growing pains.
“You just know that the author either lived next door or maybe on the next block, ’cause that’s the way things were growing up in the late ’30s, ’40s and into the ’50s,” said David Wilkins of Newbury Park.
“There was no TV showing things or a computer to Google what a boy needs to know — it was just day-to-day wonderment and exasperation to face,” Wilkins said. “The story was so close to my younger years that I started to bet myself that he would add other happenings of my life, and he often did.”
Bonnie Northcott of Westlake Village said Lichterman has a way of “making you feel everything his characters are going through… I wish this had been published when I was growing up, when times were much less threatening.”
“Becoming” is also about growing up, and learning about how young men and women deal with each other, said D.V. Cunningham of Westlake Village.
“But it’s also accepting that your parents are human,” Cunningham added. “These subjects will go on untill the end of time. Mark is wonderfully adept at revealing to women how their husbands and sons think. And it’s nice to know that they are just as scared and inquisitive about us as we are about them.”
Lichterman says he was inspired to write “Becoming” after he completed his first book, “The Climbing Boy.” “I found that I really enjoyed writing… one word led to another and more than 22 years and 293,718 words later, not counting four complete rewrites, we have what I call semi-fiction, or faction.”
He hopes that “Becoming” will inspire “the recall of youth, the remembrance of what so many of us forget over time.”
Ford Expedition Suspension and Air Shocks