Centering on a devastating day in the life of its preteen protagonist, and in 1960s history, Lewis Busbee’s “Diver” tells the story of a father-son bond through a collage of memories, some splintered and some illuminating.
“Diver” (Palmetto Publishing, 328 pages, $19, March 4, 2025), the ninth book by the San Francisco–based Buzbee (“The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop”), combines an intimate family story with a history trip that begins in the early Dustbowl period and continues through World War II, the Cold War and 1960s counterculture.
“This is a very autobiographical novel,” says Buzbee, who is making numerous local bookstore appearances this month to promote it. He acknowledges that the novel’s 12-year-old central character, Robert, is essentially himself, while Robert’s father, Mac, a retired Navy Master Diver, is his own father.
The San Jose family also includes Robert’s older brother, Ricks, a pro-war Marine; their mother Olive, described by Robert as a quiet, stable presence; and an unseen married sister.
“I wanted to write a really moving book, but not a sentimental one,” says Buzbee, describing “Diver” as a “rare father-son novel, in which the bond is close and affectionate.”
“There are so many father-son novels—the ones that spring to mind are those like ‘The Great Santini’ and ‘Studs Lonigan’—in which it’s all about the oedipal struggle between the father and son,” Buzbee says.
In contrast, “We had such a warm, tender relationship,” he says.
“The novel really only takes place on the day of Mac’s death,” explains Buzbee, adding that May 4, 1970, also was the day of the Kent State massacre (in which four students were killed and nine were wounded by the Ohio National Guard on the university campus during an antiwar rally).
The moving book consists of a flow of memories experienced by the devastated Robert, who desperately wants to hold on to his father. These memory shards take the form of bits and blips and an occasional wallop, featuring everything from Chuckles candy to a Brownie camera to a meteor shower and an afternoon that included a double wow: visiting Sealab II and meeting an astronaut.
Other chapters are devoted to the Beatles “Abbey Road” (“no more Bobby Goldsboro,” Buzbee recalls); playing hooky and going fishing or visiting a bar with Mac (“Don’t tell your mother,” Mac tells Robert, referring to Olive, a minor but vital character in the primarily male story); and Sparky, the family dog.
“Virtually everything in here is based on a story or memory,” says Buzbee, who sometimes refers to Mac as “my dad” and Robert as “me.”
Robert’s reflections also consider Mac’s early life, which began in 1920s Oklahoma and later involved a stay in an orphanage with his brother, Nim; an Oregon farm; military service in the Pacific; and lots of diving and welding.
Diving defines Mac in Robert’s recollections: “That you were a deep-sea diver was my great pride in you and my great interest,” says Robert.
Wartime, too, has shaped the psyche of this military family.
Citing the book’s epitaph in which German novelist Christa Wolf reimagines the Trojan War, Buzbee says his own family was “living within the walls of Troy, in a way, with wars always close but outside the walls.”
As for Vietnam, Mac, unlike the gung-ho Ricks, comes to view the war as a “colossal error.”
Mac’s opinions —“Idiots,” Robert quotes Mac as saying about the “old men,” not the students, at Kent State when watching a news report on what will turn out to be the last day of his life — make an impression on Robert, whose admiration for his admittedly flawed father resonates throughout the story.
“It was a very progressive family, very anti-racist,” Buzbee says, contrasting the sensibility with common perceptions of military men with Okie roots.
Buzbee describes the book as “one of the millions of sequels to ‘The Grapes of Wrath.’”
“‘The Grapes of Wrath’ is set in 1938, and what changes everything for all of those Okies that came out is World War II. Suddenly everyone’s employed: “Either you were in the military or working at a defense plant,” says Buzbee, “The subject had a great influence on me.”
Working in fiction mode, Buzbee doesn’t go soft with Mac’s undesirable aspects, including infidelity and his brutal treatment of Ricks, who gets beaten badly in a memorable passage.
“Oh man, it was just everywhere,” Buzbee says, referring to the male violence in his world.
“When I tried to write about it, I decided not to follow this thread, but instead to write about what it was like for Robert, to have male violence just sort of pop up out of nowhere.”
“I wanted the book to feel like a memoir,” Buzbee says. “I wanted it to feel that close and that intimate so I’m really writing that whole book from the point of view of that 12-year-old boy.”
He adds, “There were stories that I heard, and I had to reimagine them to make them come alive. At first they appear almost haphazardly, but my hope is that, over the course of the book, you start to see the larger narrative: This is the life of the father, this is the life of the father and son in that family. When that person just flies out of your life, it’s really startling.”
Buzbee, also a bookseller and a teacher, says his life as a writer began at age 15, when John Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the plight of Oklahoma tenant farmers inspired him.
In addition to writing “Diver,” Buzbee designed and self-published it: “After eight books with mainstream publishers, I looked around and said to myself, ‘I just want to do this one on my own,’” he says.
People are still reading books, Buzbee says, adding that “more and more bookstores are opening every month in California and around the country.” People, especially younger people, are increasingly reading books in hardcover or paperback, rather than digital, form, he says.
“There’s this current that’s really rising, and I think that’s going to last,” he says. “We have enough screens in our life, and sometimes we just like that soft white page.”
Lewis Buzbee appears at 7 p.m. March 5 at Green Apple Books on the Park, S.F.; 7 p.m. March 6 at A Great Good Place for Books, Oakland; 7 p.m. March 7 at Books Inc. Pruneyard, Campbell; 4 p.m. March 8 at Alibi Books, Vallejo; and 4 p.m. March 9 at Book Passage, Corte Madera. Visit lewisbuzbee.com.
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