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Diver
“A thoughtful and moving, but artfully unsentimental, depiction of a son’s love. Buzbee achieves a complex amalgam of celebration and lament; his narrator adores his father and sees his ‘heroic life’ as a model of manhood, but precisely because of this adoration, he experiences his dad’s loss as a catastrophic blow. Overall, it’s an admirably meditative exploration of the depths and travails of a father-son relationship.”
Kirkus Reviews
On the morning that his father, Navy deep-sea diver Mac Macoby, dies of a heart attack, 12-year-old Robert is engulfed by the memories that tie them together. The memories come in fragments, some broken, some incomplete, but together they form the portrait of a man shaped by the tides of history, not a hero’s life but a heroic one, nonetheless. Diver is about one California family in the 1960s, and about every family, a novel about the rigors of military life amid the turbulence of the counterculture movement, a novel of how memory can fail us, serve us, and support us through loss.
Kirkus Reviews
On the morning that his father, Navy deep-sea diver Mac Macoby, dies of a heart attack, 12-year-old Robert is engulfed by the memories that tie them together. The memories come in fragments, some broken, some incomplete, but together they form the portrait of a man shaped by the tides of history, not a hero’s life but a heroic one, nonetheless. Diver is about one California family in the 1960s, and about every family, a novel about the rigors of military life amid the turbulence of the counterculture movement, a novel of how memory can fail us, serve us, and support us through loss.
Paperback
Published March 3, 2025
44 people want to read
About the author
Lewis Buzbee
10 books216 followersMy new novel, Diver, will be in bookstores in March of 2025.
Lewis Buzbee is a fourth generation California native who began writing at the age of 15, after reading the first chapter of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Since then he’s been a dishwasher, a bookseller, a publisher, a caterer, a bartender, and a teacher of writing. He and his wife, the poet Julie Bruck, live with their daughter Maddy in San Francisco, just half a block from Golden Gate Park. His books for adults include The Yellow Lighted Bookshop, Blackboard, Fliegelman’s Desire, After the Gold Rush, and First to Leave Before the Sun.
His first novel for middle grade readers, Steinbeck’s Ghost, was published in 2008 by Feiwel and Friends and was selected for these honors: a Smithsonian Notable Book, a Northern California Book Award Nominee, the Northern California Independent Booksellers’ Association Children’s Book of the Year, and the California Library Association’s John and Patricia Beatty Award.
A second middle-grade novel, The Haunting of Charles Dickens, was published in 2011 and won the Northern California Book Award, was nominated for an Edgar, and was selected as a Judy Lopez Memorial Honor Book.
A third middle-grade novel, Bridge of Time, was published in May 2012--time travel, San Francisco, Mark Twain.
Lewis Buzbee is a fourth generation California native who began writing at the age of 15, after reading the first chapter of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Since then he’s been a dishwasher, a bookseller, a publisher, a caterer, a bartender, and a teacher of writing. He and his wife, the poet Julie Bruck, live with their daughter Maddy in San Francisco, just half a block from Golden Gate Park. His books for adults include The Yellow Lighted Bookshop, Blackboard, Fliegelman’s Desire, After the Gold Rush, and First to Leave Before the Sun.
His first novel for middle grade readers, Steinbeck’s Ghost, was published in 2008 by Feiwel and Friends and was selected for these honors: a Smithsonian Notable Book, a Northern California Book Award Nominee, the Northern California Independent Booksellers’ Association Children’s Book of the Year, and the California Library Association’s John and Patricia Beatty Award.
A second middle-grade novel, The Haunting of Charles Dickens, was published in 2011 and won the Northern California Book Award, was nominated for an Edgar, and was selected as a Judy Lopez Memorial Honor Book.
A third middle-grade novel, Bridge of Time, was published in May 2012--time travel, San Francisco, Mark Twain.
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Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
March 19, 2025
I enjoyed taking this deep dive with Lewis Buzbee, a lushly descriptive but careful writer, as he plumbed the depths of his childhood, his experience of his father, his inherited family stories, in this project of near-memoir. Especially interesting to me were the depictions of San Jose and the Bay Area from years back. I grew up in the same area as Buzbee. I tend to think of it as a characterless place, but reading Diver, so many of those places came back to me so vividly and I gained a new appreciation.
June 28, 2025
Diver by Lewis Buzbee
Published 2024
Format: print
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
“You told me every single one of your stories.
Whenever and wherever I asked to hear them. Though mostly when it was the two of us alone together. In your favorite bar or late at night in the family room when Mom was already asleep.
Somehow it was easier for you to tell them when we were alone. The stories then were more detailed, and more fantastic, nearly incredible.
Even when the stories changed, from telling to telling, and often got mixed together or were told completely out of order, I didn’t object, because I heard the truth in your voice and knew that, if I listened closely, your life could be found there.”
On the morning his father dies, 12-year-old Robert is flooded with memories of the complicated man he knew as Dad. This was a very personal read for me; it’s the first June (and Father’s Day) without a father figure…no father, stepfather, grandfather, or father-in-law. Since Robert lives in Northern California in the 60s, it brought up wonderful memories of my own childhood at that time. Buzbee is such a gifted writer and storyteller. On Independent Bookstore Day, Karen from Alibi Bookshop pressed this book into my hands and said I needed to read it. She was so right!
Published 2024
Format: print
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
“You told me every single one of your stories.
Whenever and wherever I asked to hear them. Though mostly when it was the two of us alone together. In your favorite bar or late at night in the family room when Mom was already asleep.
Somehow it was easier for you to tell them when we were alone. The stories then were more detailed, and more fantastic, nearly incredible.
Even when the stories changed, from telling to telling, and often got mixed together or were told completely out of order, I didn’t object, because I heard the truth in your voice and knew that, if I listened closely, your life could be found there.”
On the morning his father dies, 12-year-old Robert is flooded with memories of the complicated man he knew as Dad. This was a very personal read for me; it’s the first June (and Father’s Day) without a father figure…no father, stepfather, grandfather, or father-in-law. Since Robert lives in Northern California in the 60s, it brought up wonderful memories of my own childhood at that time. Buzbee is such a gifted writer and storyteller. On Independent Bookstore Day, Karen from Alibi Bookshop pressed this book into my hands and said I needed to read it. She was so right!
October 2, 2025
5/5 stars
Moving and incredible.
Moving and incredible.
April 12, 2025
What a great book. I loved the multiple points of view to see other sides of the characters - Mac’s actions as an adult are more understandable (not necessarily forgivable) when we see what his life was like growing up. His career as a diver and the relationships with his sons, and the way Buzbee intertwines them, are so interesting. Don’t pass up this fascinating story!
December 30, 2024
Poignant, stirring, and emotional. This beautifully written book was a delight to read and lingered on my mind after I finished reading. It captures a son’s memories of his father and growing up in a military household. Loved how different POVs were used and the use of vignettes in different chapters - reflecting how memory works. The prose was spectacular and loved the imagery and nature captured in this book! A must read.
May 28, 2025
I have always been a Lewis Buzbee fan since I first discovered his work back in 2007, but this may be my favorite books of his yet. His voice is honest, vulnerable, and authentic in this novel. I love the way he captures the most beautiful aspects of the San Francisco Bay Area and the era in which he experienced it. Reading his book made me feel like I had come home to find all the people I hadn’t seen in a long time. Stunning prose!
October 8, 2025
Buzbee captures what it’s like to see the world as a child, specifically a son: the wonder, the confusion, the love, the frustration, the shame, the beauty. Each chapter is a memory written with rich, honest detail, and in the end these memories weave together to give a full, true, complex portrait of a father and a son.
July 5, 2025
This book is so beautiful and unique, a meditation of memory, of place, of home. It’s ironic that home is the word that comes to mind when there is so much travel and time away from home in the book, and Buzbee describes it all so lovingly and without being overly sentimental. “But I stopped, out on the sidewalk, and just looked at our house. It had always been painted turquoise, my mother is insistence, a bright shade of motel swimming pool, and in the sunset’s lights, it seemed to glow, emanating something I felt but could not name.“
The evocative external details really made the novel (autofiction, really, I think) for me. It’s full of gorgeous alliteration and other figurative language that sings. The son’s adoration of his imperfect father and the father’s tenderness toward his son was portrayed in such a human and relatable way. And I loved the descriptions of one family’s California history. A few favorite chapters: Mac, Buy th’ Bucket, Vacation, Grand Ole Opry.
The evocative external details really made the novel (autofiction, really, I think) for me. It’s full of gorgeous alliteration and other figurative language that sings. The son’s adoration of his imperfect father and the father’s tenderness toward his son was portrayed in such a human and relatable way. And I loved the descriptions of one family’s California history. A few favorite chapters: Mac, Buy th’ Bucket, Vacation, Grand Ole Opry.
February 28, 2025
Litstack
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews