Ogden Kern - Hardcover

by Edwin Ritts (Author)

Born into a warm Cleveland household in 1950, Ogden Kern navigates life sideways-with good humor and an eye for the telling detail.

From a boyhood of cowboy shows and Saturday adventures, through the newsrooms of Evansville and Atlanta, a failed marriage, a new love, and an unexpected collision with organized crime, Ogden follows the thread of an ordinary life lived in extraordinary times. He covers Atlanta's flourishing art scene, raises three children with his Italian-American wife, Reese, and finds himself drawn-against all good advice-into the shadow world of New York mobsters and Colombian cartel operators.

When a mob-connected friend finally makes clear that curiosity has limits, Ogden makes the most unlikely choice of his life: to raise his family in a Sicilian villa under the quiet protection of a powerful local family-and somehow call it peace.

Continuing the story begun in Harry Kern, Ogden Kern is a coming-of-age story that doesn't stop coming of age. Funny, frank, and deeply human, it is a love letter to a vanishing America and the ordinary man who paid close attention.