Cloudbreak, California: A Memoir

by Kelly Daniels

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 it’s core, Daniel’s has created an admirable reflection on the power of imagination to transform us into who we are meant to be.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction

230 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Kelly Daniels grew up on the road, living for stints with his parents in a Hawaiian commune, a waterless, powerless cabin in the desert, and in an old step-van outfitted with bunks. As an adult, he set off on his own, traveling extensively through Europe, Mexico and Central America. Along the way, he picked up odd jobs when he could find them, jobs such as production manager of a furniture factory (Guatemala), newspaper reporter (Mexico), and bartender (all over).

His short fiction and nonfiction has appeared in Puerto del Sol, Cimarron Review, Third Coast, Sonora Review, South Dakota Review, Santa Clara Review, GSU Review, Orange Coast Review, Eyeshot and other journals. Among other awards, he recently won first prize in Creative Nonfiction at the San Miguel Writers’ Conference. He lives with his wife and young son in Rock Island, Illinois, where he teaches creative writing at Augustana College.

Reviews

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Because of his fascinating, fractured upbringing, Daniels seeks structure with the same drive that takes him to warmer, wilder climates. In balancing his taste for order with his wanderlust, Daniels actually goes native in the way most travel narrative protagonists never do--he takes on responsibilities in new places and becomes part of a community. His encounters with the more typical travelling expats underline these differences. Daniels worries about taking drugs in the right setting and getting to work the next day. I really enjoyed this, because I could actually relate. So often travel memoirs star the kind of protagonists that I recognize as the people I avoid on the road, because the stakes of their journey and the risks they take don't make sense to me as a basically practical but curious person. For this reason, Daniels' openness about his finances is strangely riveting. His father's rejection of his grandparents' materialism is never as genuine as Daniels' own quiet attempt to make it without a safety net, as his father's shenanigans gradually consume his family's ability to pay for them. Memoirists often glorify the sex and the drugs and downplay the money. Kelly Daniels' work here is a corrective to that trend. Though he doesn't exactly skip sex and drugs, the economic realities of his life as a child of a fugitive who could afford to "slum," and the brother of a burgeoning career criminal show how these approaches to guaranteeing the necessities for oneself and one's family are an adventure just as compelling as sleeping your way through Narcotics Anonymous or waking up in a Mexican jail.

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won this in a first reads give-away. I had recently read a book about someone who had traveled around and really liked it. Kelly had a tough upbringing and seemed to be searching for something better and needed to keep moving/searching for it. He met some interesting people, visited some cool places and had some experiences that I am sure have shaped him as a person. I am always impressed with people that overcome a rough childhood and make sure they don't take that same path. Thanks for sharing your journey!

[Chuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story is a memoir of a literature teacher now living in Rockford, Illinois. His journey to this traditional place and traditional career is anything but traditional. If a story of a young man that was raised by a flower child mother who spent most of her life in the California desert and by a father that when he was not surfing was sharing a room with other prison inmates then this book is recommended. This bio is full of colorful, but often helpless characters that seem to follow Mr. Daniels everywhere. It also reflects long periods of time wandering the backroads of Central America and Mexico with time to occasionally come home to coastal California for a shower and a Big Mac. It deals with poverty, surfing, drugs, strip clubs, corrupt police and officials, hostels, and adventures that even the author would probably now consider victim prone. That is the redemption of this book; he lived through it and on the last few pages made an unusually intelligent decision to go back to graduate school. This is a coming of age book that its redeeming value was that the author survived many questionable decisions. The memoir does leave you with the feeling that the main reason for his survival was his intelligence and his kindness.

[Paul Wilner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my review of Kelly Daniels (excellent ) book, for Zyzzyva magazine.

http://www.zyzzyva.org/2013/06/18/kel...

[Mary Robinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A well-written memoir of a man who was pulled out of his middle-school class one day by his surfer Dad and told some shocking news that could land his Dad in prison. Admired that the author was trying to get at the truth, no more, no less. No grand pronouncements about certain points of his life except sometimes to offer insights gained as an adult into his chaotic coming of age – and his belated arrival into adulthood after years of wandering the world.

[Sonja · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good and interesting book. Very easy to read. I like this book much.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific book--filled with adventures, hope, longing, and humor. About as close to a perfect travel memoir as you're going to get.

[CB Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure what the point of this was.

[Todd Loves Reading · Rating 5 out of 5]

wonderfully written, what more can you say about a memoir?