0:04

Gays reading where the greats drop by trendy authors. Tell us all the who, what, and why. Anyone can listen. Comes we are spoiler free. Reading from Stars to book club picks. The curious minds can get their picks. So you say you're not gay. Well that's okay. There's something for everyone. Gays rating. Hello and welcome to Gays Reading. I'm your host, Jason Blitman, and welcome to this bonus episode. I'm so excited because today I get to announce the September Gays Reading Book Club Pick, which is The Sunflower Boys by Sam Walkman, you could check out the link in the show notes and in the link tree over on Instagram, to join the book club through altoa. Your first book is only$1, so go check that out today. Uh, if you are not already following Gay's reading on Instagram, we are just at Gays Reading and I'm currently partnering with Vintage Books to do a really fun giveaway, so go check that out over on Instagram. And also I just last night was in conversation in person with an author, and I have to just tell you about this book. The book is called Indian Country by Shoba Rao, and it is one of the best books that I've read this year. It is absolutely gonna be in my top 10 books of this year, and I'm not seeing it all over the place, and I need to be seeing it all over the place. So I just needed to tell. All the people that I know. Um, and that's mostly you. So check out Indian Country by Show Barra. Highly recommend. It's a beautiful book. Um, and now please enjoy my conversation with Sam Wachman all about the September Gays Reading Book Club. Pick the Sunflower Boys.

Jason Blitman: 1:58

Sam Wachman, welcome to Gay's Reading.

Sam Wachman: 2:00

Oh, thank you. Very glad to be here.

Jason Blitman: 2:02

I am very glad to have you. This is a Super Special Midsummer, even though we're on a break Bonus episode.

Sam Wachman: 2:12

Oh, I didn't know that.

Jason Blitman: 2:14

Yes. Because we are here to talk about not only your debut, but the newest Gays reading a book club. Pick your book, the Sunflower Boys.

Sam Wachman: 2:27

Fantastic. Is

Jason Blitman: 2:28

Do you have a finished copy yet? How

Sam Wachman: 2:30

I've got 25 finished topics. I actually gave away 24, so this is the last one.

Jason Blitman: 2:37

the last man standing? I have made it a rule that for my book club, I'm only allowed to have beautiful covers.

Sam Wachman: 2:44

Oh I love this cover. I feel so lucky that they gave they gave me at Harper so much say,

Jason Blitman: 2:51

Oh yeah.

Sam Wachman: 2:52

yeah. They they gave me a bunch of different options and I said, can we go with it? Another option that you didn't give me? And we had a bunch of back and forths about it. I have no idea who the artist is. I really wish that I knew that I could like, give them a hug or maybe like a lot of money.

Jason Blitman: 3:10

They probably received a lot of money, but not from you. But a hug they'd probably take or a shout out on social media or something.

Sam Wachman: 3:17

Yeah. Seriously, I,

Jason Blitman: 3:19

What was your, when you said you did a lot of back and forth, what was the sort of inspo for this cover?

Sam Wachman: 3:25

There were originally a couple of different, proposals from the, I don't know if it was one artist or like the, a bunch of artists that Harper has. And it came down to one of the options was this cover boat with just one bicycle. And with kind of like different lighting and different colors and stuff. And my agent was involved and my mom, who's an art teacher, was involved and my mom suggested like maybe there should be two bicycles.'cause there's two

Jason Blitman: 3:49

Yes, it is, this cover would not be the same without a second bicycle.

Sam Wachman: 3:52

I agree. Yeah. So does my mom, so she, my mom,

Jason Blitman: 3:57

I love that she's an art teacher and that she had a say in your cover.

Sam Wachman: 4:01

oh, absolutely. No, she's had a, she's had a say in quite a lot of this.

Jason Blitman: 4:05

That is really fun. It's beautiful and someone pointed out to me that it's giving like a European cover, like a UK cover, because a lot of UK books have the frame.

Sam Wachman: 4:18

Oh, interesting. I had no idea.

Jason Blitman: 4:20

Neither did I, and then he pointed that out to me and I was like, oh, I, now I see that. Anyway, that's my little inside intel for

Sam Wachman: 4:27

I didn't realize that covers. Would vary by, I guess it makes sense that they would vary by the country where they're published, but I had no idea. Thank you for enlightening me about the book a little bit. I'm such an outsider to all of this.

Jason Blitman: 4:38

how, so I'm curious about this journey for you. What you call yourself an outsider, what does that mean?

Sam Wachman: 4:46

I feel like an outsider to all this insofar as it's my debut and I have no MFA or anything. I have a bachelor's in something very unrelated and I

Jason Blitman: 4:55

is your bachelor's degree in?

Sam Wachman: 4:57

public health, I'm not using that ever.

Jason Blitman: 5:00

Listen, you never know.

Sam Wachman: 5:02

Maybe. I don't know. I was like pre-med and then I stopped hating myself and so by the way, I we're not giving any more airtime to ami, but he was also at Brandeis for a year and a half and then stopped being at Brandeis, and I think he was also pre-med for a year and a half. So yeah.

Jason Blitman: 5:18

You're following in the footsteps

Sam Wachman: 5:19

Following in his footsteps.

Jason Blitman: 5:20

I happened to have a picnic with

Sam Wachman: 5:22

up maybe in 10 years. I'll end up having a picnic with you.

Jason Blitman: 5:25

Yes. Perfect. Maybe, probably sooner if we're being honest.

Sam Wachman: 5:29

hope so. I hope so.

Jason Blitman: 5:31

Okay. So you feel like an outsider.

Sam Wachman: 5:33

I definitely feel like an outsider to all of this. I didn't for example, I didn't have a finished manuscript or even an idea already when I met my agent, I had written a short story and she reached out to me and she was like, do you want an agent? And I said, yeah, thanks. And

Jason Blitman: 5:47

We're gonna need to cut that because any

Sam Wachman: 5:49

I know, oh.

Jason Blitman: 5:51

wants to be an author that is just like not, that's fake news.

Sam Wachman: 5:55

There's a lot here you're gonna need to cut. Yeah. But definitely feeling like I'm learning a lot about the publishing world for the first time. There's and there's a lot that I think people have been spending years and decades rehearsing for that I'm just thinking about now.

Jason Blitman: 6:10

Okay, for our listeners, what is the elevator pitch for the Sunflower Boys? And this one can be a longer elevator ride if you want it to be.

Sam Wachman: 6:20

Like longer than like a sentence or, okay. Never been good at these it's.

Jason Blitman: 6:25

Nobody is. It's okay.

Sam Wachman: 6:27

It's a coming of age story set in Ukraine, following a preteen boy Artem before and during the war. As he struggles to understand his nascent sexuality. And he asks what it means to be a good brother and a good son and a good man. I think that was actually just one sentence.

Jason Blitman: 6:47

Yeah, look, a couple commas in there.

Sam Wachman: 6:50

Yeah. Maybe semicolon. Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 6:52

Maybe a semicolon. I don't really know how to use a semicolon properly,

Sam Wachman: 6:55

one does. Don't worry.

Jason Blitman: 6:56

probably let's just stick one in for the sake of

Sam Wachman: 6:58

Sounds good.

Jason Blitman: 6:59

It'll make us look smart.

Sam Wachman: 7:01

Oh yeah, for sure. Absolutely.

Jason Blitman: 7:03

My poor high school English teacher

Sam Wachman: 7:05

My poor high school English teacher is going to be at the book launch. Don't think I was the best student. I did not like reading. This is another thing that made me, I think. A outsider or whatever to the whole literary world is that I hated reading in high school.

Jason Blitman: 7:18

Did you, is that, has that changed for you? Do you like reading now?

Sam Wachman: 7:22

Yeah I'm okay with it. Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 7:25

Not all. Not all writers like reading, so

Sam Wachman: 7:28

that's like most of the job. I think that you should ingest a lot more literature than you create for

Jason Blitman: 7:35

I think there are people who like creating worlds and who are storytellers and who I just heard someone when, okay. I don't wanna say who I heard, say this because that'll give something, that'll give a feature episode away, but I just heard somebody say this that when you're a kid. Making up stories out loud is lying, but if you write them down, then it's storytelling. So I imagine there are some people who are like professional liars and so they put it down on the page rather than enjoy reading.

Sam Wachman: 8:11

Yes. I think that is a part of it. I've never been like a pathological liar, but I understand the urge. I get bored easily, I think, and I like to come up with things to say, even if they're not true, just to spice up the conversation. I'm not gonna do that with you. Don't worry.

Jason Blitman: 8:28

And if you did, that's okay too. When did you start enjoying reading?

Sam Wachman: 8:33

I feel like I started enjoying reading in probably in college. I have slash had a fantastic professor who's also a writer Steven McCauley who he started assigning me short stories to read. And I feel like that was. That was the first time that I really enjoyed just the act of reading for the sake of reading itself. I, he's a creative writing professor and I didn't have a lot of creative writing related aspirations at the time, but I had also known him since I was six because he used to. He used to sit and write at like the cafe that my mom used to sit me at while she taught. Like she didn't wanna hire a babysitter or whatever, so she was just like sitting down at a cafe and be like, here take this, have this strange gay man watch you for a while I teach. And that strange gay man ended up being my professor. Yeah. And so I figured, okay, if he's teaching at my university, I have to take a class with him.

Jason Blitman: 9:30

How fun.

Sam Wachman: 9:31

Yeah. And I asked him if he remembered me and he did not, but. But I then later on, a year later I reminded him that he used to quiz me on the capitals of different countries. And he remembered, he was like, you didn't get Lichtenstein. That was the one I stumped you on.

Jason Blitman: 9:45

Oh, how funny

Sam Wachman: 9:46

Steve, I was special to you.

Jason Blitman: 9:48

was that are you known for knowing the capitals of countries?

Sam Wachman: 9:52

I think I was at that age, I think that I wanted to be known for that.

Jason Blitman: 9:57

Is that a thing you can do now? Still?

Sam Wachman: 10:00

I guess you could try. I think I'm prob probably pretty rusty.

Jason Blitman: 10:03

I wouldn't know. This would be that situation where I would say something and you could lie to me and it would spice up the conversation.'cause I wouldn't know the difference. Okay, so you talk about this book coming of Age Story during the war in the Ukraine. It takes place in 2022.

Sam Wachman: 10:19

it does.

Jason Blitman: 10:20

It is a very prescient novel.

Sam Wachman: 10:23

Yeah I thank you. And that was not entirely intentional. It was, I started writing it in 2019 it was obviously a very different novel at that point. I had my grandparents also's great grandparents. I'll say that sentence without that, so that

Jason Blitman: 10:41

That's okay. No, we could talk about AMI as much as we want. It's fine. He can get shout outs.

Sam Wachman: 11:21

My great grandparents came from Ukraine. And my grandparents were more connected to it than my parents were, and then more connected to it than I was. As tends to happen when you assimilate to Canada and the us and and in college, I. Decided to go to Ukraine or quote unquote go back to Ukraine, return to Ukraine to under the guise of improving my language skills. Because at that point I really only knew how to say grandparent things in Ukrainian. Eat something you're wasting away. You know it.

Jason Blitman: 11:52

How do you say that?

Sam Wachman: 11:54

Yeah. And and. Actually the real reason was that I wanted to understand my own relationship to the country a bit better, my family's relationship. It's not a simple relationship'cause we're Jews and it's a whole, it's a whole complicated history that I wanted to figure out like, can I belong to this place? Do I feel like I belong to this place? Or is this just like a foreign country where people that I'm related to happen to live for a while? And it. Really turned out to be the former. I definitely fell in love with the place a lot and also found just a sense of community and belonging and really fell in love with Ukrainian literature as well.

Jason Blitman: 12:32

Was there something that surprised you about that?

Sam Wachman: 12:35

there was a lot that surprised me about that. Yeah. I, I think that there are a lot of things that, uh. How do I put this? Small details that I would notice that would just remind me of my grandparents and I would think I, I thought that was just something about my grandparents, but actually it's something that exists in an entire country. Certain, a certain spice, a certain food, a certain figure of speech or mannerism or way of holding yourself or way of decorating your house. It just it all felt very much like home in a sort of a way that maybe I should have expected, but I

Jason Blitman: 13:11

I imagine that if you assumed that it was unique to your grandparents, why would you anticipate going to an entire, going to a country and having the entire country feel that way

Sam Wachman: 13:20

Yeah, actually there's 40 million people who do this. Yeah. So I ended up teaching English there at a one room schoolhouse in the middle of nowhere. And I had at any given point, I had 10 ish kids. The youngest ones were about Yuri's age, and the oldest ones were about EM'S age. And and that was really what made me want to start writing about the place was just that I figured, it was a place that really touched me. It was the first place that I'd ever really lived away from my parents as well, which I think definitely had a, played a role in it. But it, I think that it was just a really, it was originally meant as a love letter from Diaspora to Homeland, I think. And also I had, at that point, I had a student who confided in me about his own sexuality. And I was just, for me, that was also a revelatory moment because, the experience of being 13 and gay in Cambridge, Massachusetts versus in like rural Ukraine was, couldn't be more different. Ukraine is getting better on that front. And has gotten the environment has changed quite a lot since the war, and so far as I think that Ukrainian politics and Ukrainian society had been pushed a little bit toward Europe. But at that time it was still very much. Even more taboo than it is now, I'd say. Whereas like I grew up I guess I just never considered the, it sounds very stupid to say, but I'd never considered the possibility of homophobia being like a real life thing. I'd never encountered it. I grew up in a very progressive family. I, I knew intellectually that it existed in real life, but it was I also knew intellectually that like polar bears existed in real life. I just never seen one. Didn't feel real until I encountered it. Yeah,

Jason Blitman: 15:07

Yeah. And so that was the impetus for starting to write, but then what was the journey like from 2019 to finishing the novel? Because you said it started out as one thing turned into another.

Sam Wachman: 15:20

It did. Yeah. It started out as very much a slice of life coming of age story, more atmospheric than propulsive. Like definitely just wanted to give it an impression of a place and a time, and a and a. Person rather than have it be as suspenseful as the finished product is'cause that suspense was absent from real life at the time. And

Jason Blitman: 15:42

Sure.

Sam Wachman: 15:43

yeah. Yeah. And so it was very different. I read recently Open Heaven by Sean Hewitt and it reminded me a lot of what my alpha could have been.

Jason Blitman: 15:50

Absolutely. Yes. Former gays reading guest Sean Hewitt

Sam Wachman: 15:55

oh really?

Jason Blitman: 15:56

Uhhuh.

Sam Wachman: 15:56

Oh, no way. Okay. Fantastic. Great company. I had a around a hundred pages of manuscript half finished a lot of insert scene here later, do this later. It's that I left in and then I was studying abroad in Denmark for my last semester of college. When tensions started. Increasing in Ukraine in Eastern Europe in general. And I definitely, I just, I remember on the night of February 23rd, which was the night before the war, I got a text from a student. He was like nervous about a competition that he was participating in. And we texted for a little while and then said goodnight. And then nine hours later he called me and he was like, we're in a basement. There's missiles. Outside. And he like held his phone to the door and you could hear airer raid sirens. And I was like, but that's not good. And so that was the moment where I entirely abandoned my book for a year. I think that the active writing felt. F both frivolous and just at that point it was anachronistic. I was writing about a country that no longer existed in a place that didn't exist in the same way. Obviously the country continues to exist, but it's been changed at like the DNA level.

Jason Blitman: 17:12

Sure. It like immediately turned into historical fiction.

Sam Wachman: 17:14

exactly. Yeah. And I didn't feel like I could write that. I've, I'm very American and I didn't feel like I could write that story. I didn't feel like I wanted to write that story. I spent the year, I flunked the semester in a really spectacular fashion. I like stopped going to class a lot. I went to Berlin where I had. One of my best friends lived there and I stayed with her for a while and I volunteered at the Berlin, like how Bonoff like the train station deal, central Station and'cause there was a, there were tons of Ukrainians coming in and basically being directed to various. Displaced persons camps in German cities and needing medical care and such. And they needed people who could speak both English and Ukrainian and also Russian. And and there, there were not many of those people. So I figured I was also, I was an EMT in college, so I was able to have some, yeah, that was I got my EMT certification in college. I, I spent most of my college EMT experience, like rolling over drunk freshmen, like onto their sides. So wounds sustained during combat were a little bit of a different level, but we figured it out. And I, my students all, they're spread to all the winds. They ended up in Poland and in Romania and in various basements and in other farther west Ukrainian cities that were safer. And so I didn't cross the border at that point. Honestly, mostly for my mother's sake. But I. I, was in Poland and Romania a lot visiting them and I guess not trying to be like the, big American savior or whatever, but trying to just I felt like I was a part of this community and a part of this nation in some bizarre way and that I didn't fully understand, but I definitely still feel like membership and so I wanted to, I guess at least like bear witness and. And experience with the people who I love and care about.

Jason Blitman: 19:13

Yeah. And. I, my sort of interpretation of the book was this, not interpretation of the book per se, but of you writing the book was not American savior so much as you using your privilege as an American who has the capacity to write this book and tell this story and shed light on this community of people how

Sam Wachman: 19:36

Thank you.

Jason Blitman: 19:37

that, that was my experience with it because it was, you, you, it felt like you were doing a service to them.

Sam Wachman: 19:43

Oh I appreciate that. I've been, that's been a major point of anxiety for me. I've, to be fair, throughout writing this book, I've run every draft of it past about 10 Ukrainian friends, and they've given me the thumbs up or. They have helped me identify things that don't really ring true or whatever, and we've gone back and changed it. So I, I do feel like it's been proofread by Ukrainians who are way more Ukrainian than I am. And also at the same time, there's all this discourse right now about who should tell which stories. And I wanna be like, mindful of that, but I think I do see it more as like a, yeah, I think I see it still as like a love letter rather than.

Jason Blitman: 20:26

Yeah. And listen, let's like be very clear. You are Ukrainian. You are just not, you were not born in Ukraine,

Sam Wachman: 20:32

There we go. Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 20:33

So it's

Sam Wachman: 20:35

Yeah. And I'm Jewish, which is also a, it's a, some people find it to be a different thing. Some Jewish people find it to be a different thing. Even if they were born in Ukraine and all of their grandparents were or whatever, they might still think of themselves as more Jewish. Some Ukrainians might think of Jews as something separate. It's not everyone, I think that is a situation that's getting, that's improving a lot. Especially now that the president of Ukraine, love him or hate him, is Jewish. And I think that is changing a lot. But certainly in my grandparents' time they were a separate ethnicity.

Jason Blitman: 21:04

Back to your students for a minute. I know that, so you get these text messages, you get these phone calls and. A lot of these humans that you've grew to know and love and care about are found in the book in some capacity.

Sam Wachman: 21:23

absolutely.

Jason Blitman: 21:24

What was that experience like, hearing some of their stories?

Sam Wachman: 21:28

Yeah. I'm. This is very much a love letter to them as well. And I had the desire to convey them to the world. I I love them to bits. They're I've known them now for six years which like, I think that we've seen each other grow a lot. And I think that I just wanted to share these amazing people with the rest of the world. It felt unfair that I got all of them to myself. And so I have, this is inspired particularly by three or four of my students who I haven't taught in years at this point. They're just younger friends.

Jason Blitman: 21:58

Sure.

Sam Wachman: 21:58

and also by my friend and her son who I met at the Berlin Central Station. And. I asked them where they were going and they said, Cambridge, Massachusetts. And I said surprise. And and we ended up very close friends and her son also very much inspired Yuri as a character. And so yeah, shout out to Maxim. So it was a cathartic exercise as well for me to convey my students' experiences'cause. They were texting me, calling me pretty constantly, and I was, meeting, meeting up with them and their families a lot. And I didn't really know where to put all of this. I would hear the most traumatic shit from them. And then you go, oh, you are 12. And I don't know what to do with that.'cause that's, it's actually worse that you said that'cause you're 12 and I want to cry now, but I don't know where to, what to do with that. I don't want to cry in front of you. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna just write this down somewhere and we're gonna save that for later. And at the same time, I wanted the world to know what. How they were dealing with it and like their resilience and what they had been through and how they had, how they were still continuing to be these wonderful versions of themselves, despite everything. And so one year into the war, like on the, literally on the anniversary, the one year anniversary of the war, I was working at. A volunteering at a camp in Romania, which was like a respite camp for Ukrainian kids. And by some miracle, all four of the students who like directly inspired this. This book all came to that camp from like all over Europe which was a logistical nightmare and somehow worked out and I'm so grateful. And we were all sitting around way past. All of our bedtimes having like tea and cookies and I was mostly listening and they were like exchanging stories'cause they hadn't seen each other in a year either. They were, one of them was in Ukraine, one of'em was in Moldova. And and I said something like, you guys need to write a book. And one of us said, you do it. We're busy. And so I took that as a blessing to move forward with this. And I reopened my Google Doc, which had been collecting dust and fermenting, and I was like, yeah, I, if I really do wanna write this book, I have to take a hard left turn here and I have to incorporate the war somehow. But I still wanted to incorporate Ukraine in its most peaceful form or the peaceful form in which I knew it.'cause I wanted the, I wanted also to convey, I think that. Like probably if you Google Ukraine at this point, you go to Google Images, it's just gonna be photos of like smoldering ruins of cities a lot. And I think that the, to me, that's part of the tragedy is that the nation was not known very well to American readerships, to Americans in general. And I went there and I, I found like really. Truly beautiful place. And I think that now that it's just known for war, I think that's just like a very unfair, I don't wanna say unfair representation, but I wanted to also show the version of Ukraine that I knew so that people could, could fathom, begin to fathom what had been lost and that would maybe also make people care about, about getting it back.

Jason Blitman: 25:23

And. And about what these people in general, but what these two young people are losing.

Sam Wachman: 25:31

Yeah. Absolutely.

Jason Blitman: 25:33

At the heart of it, for me, it is this story of these brothers.

Sam Wachman: 25:39

Yeah, I think so too.

Jason Blitman: 25:40

Are you a sibling?

Sam Wachman: 25:42

Weirdly, I'm not,

Jason Blitman: 25:43

Really? You are an only child.

Sam Wachman: 25:45

am an only child.

Jason Blitman: 25:47

Fascinating.

Sam Wachman: 25:47

Maybe that's why I was able to write such a like loving sibling relationship is'cause I actually don't have any annoying siblings to,

Jason Blitman: 25:53

No sibling trauma?

Sam Wachman: 25:55

yeah.

Jason Blitman: 25:56

I am the oldest of three and uh, yeah, at the end of the day, for me it was very much about their relationship. It. This is gonna sound crazy to you, to my listeners, to anyone who maybe has read the book or will read the book. However, I'm gonna stand my ground and hold to this thought.

Sam Wachman: 26:18

Go for it.

Jason Blitman: 26:19

It is giving some version of a modern sound of music.

Sam Wachman: 26:29

I need to process that for a moment. Can you like okay. I, hold on. I'm still working on that one. Can you help me get like halfway there?

Jason Blitman: 26:39

So there is joy and love and happiness in a time of like great despair.

Sam Wachman: 26:48

Yeah. Okay.

Jason Blitman: 26:48

And at the end of Sound of Music, do you, are you familiar?

Sam Wachman: 26:53

Yeah, I watched it when I was like 10 and that's the last,

Jason Blitman: 26:57

Okay. The family escapes over the mountains, over the Alps to escape the Nazis. So they like sing. They sing Re Me, but then they also are in this war torn space.

Sam Wachman: 27:13

Okay. I, yeah, that does make sense. I see the para. Yeah. Thank

Jason Blitman: 27:17

You see how I got there?

Sam Wachman: 27:17

my memory there. Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 27:18

Okay. But I, but there is this sort of, there's just this element of, joy within, uh, a very horrific. Experience to someone who might say, war, death bombs kids, I don't wanna read that. What would you, is there, what would you say to them?

Sam Wachman: 27:43

I do think that the book is about much more than that.

Jason Blitman: 27:45

I fully agree with you, but if that's what someone is

Sam Wachman: 27:48

would I say to them? I do think it's a joyful book, even if it's also marred by tragedy. I think that oh gosh. I don't, honestly, I think that if you don't wanna read a book about like war and kids and stuff they probably

Jason Blitman: 28:01

Yeah, no, it's not the right book

Sam Wachman: 28:03

Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 28:04

but I guess the point is that it is so much more than that. It is not just a book about war.

Sam Wachman: 28:09

And I appreciate that came across because I think that, one of the ways that Ukrainians have been dealing with with everything that's happened is through dark humor and also just finding joy in small moments and the. Obviously it's very difficult to find good things that have come from the war. I will say that the sense of community and the way that communities have been galvanized to help one another and to get to know their neighbors and the neighbors needs and to really be there for each other is something that I find really admirable. And I think that finding, salvaging some. Something good from the wreckage is something that I wanted to also convey in the book. And also portraying the resilience of people and of kids who do experience war and who do witness war crimes. And it seems like it's something that you can't come back from. And it's true that it's like you the direction of your life is probably going to change irreparably, but. You continue living and you kids are incredibly resilient and people are incredibly resilient. And and I have seen kids, I've seen my kids really end up, they get dug up in the most violent way possible and it seems like they just left their roots in the soil and they're not gonna make it. And then they're planted in new soil and they just continue to grow.

Jason Blitman: 29:39

I love that. This has been I've talked more details about a book than I typically do. Mostly because it's this book club pick and I want people to learn more about it and get excited to read it. And yeah, I am, I don't wanna give anything from the book away obviously, but, so I'm excited for folks to. Hear what you've just said and then experience it and maybe get some more insight and glimmers into this really beautiful story.

Sam Wachman: 30:09

Thank you so much. I really appreciate you picking this and spotlighting it and then chatting with me. I think that you've, yeah, you have made this a truly non-car experience. This is my, one of my first times speaking about the book out loud to someone. And I think that writers don't usually become writers'cause they're good at talking to people. So thank you for making this so unintimidating.

Jason Blitman: 30:30

I cannot wait for everyone to read the Sunflower Boys. A, it is out now wherever books are sold. But b, you really should join the Gays Reading Book Club with Altoa. The link is in the show notes and the bio, all the things. Check it out. Join the club. Be a part of the conversation. Read it as a group. I can't wait for everyone to read it.

Sam Wachman: 30:51

Thank you so much, Jason.