Leave the Kid Alone: A Fractured Remembrance

“Historians and baby boomers alike will recall the 1950s as a golden age. A golden age of television, sports and the American family dream. Steve Zettler’s insightful Leave the Kid Alone, reveals the tarnish and the shadow that hung over this golden age… a great and insightful memoir.” Dan Lauria, star of The Wonder Years

Stevie is seven years old, going on eight, and the world is his oyster.

He’s growing up above the family restaurant/bar/country inn, nestled in the free-spirited, alcohol-saturated Bucks County, Pennsylvania of the 1950s. The Inn is a magnet—a merry-go-round attracting larger-than-life characters from every imaginable walk of life.

On one side are the customers and overnight guests: Broadway producers, actors and songsters; Pulitzer Prize–winning authors, colorful artists, mobsters, and the occasional governor. On the other side of the kitchen’s swinging door are the employees: worldly-wise war veterans, savvy waitresses, and acerbic bartenders.

For Stevie, it’s a world of constant motion, noise, and wonder.

But his life is about to change in a way no one could have predicted.

Growing up can be hard to do—and there may be no way of avoiding it.