Secret Frequencies: A New York Education (American Lives) - Softcover

"A deeply engaging and funny book by a marvelous writer."—Tracy Kidder, author of The Soul of a New Machine and Home Town.

"A salty, entertaining coming-of-age story with a real-life Sopranos cast. Skoyles’ evocation of gritty, unhomogenized Manhattan in the post-Beat era particularly won my heart."—Joyce Johnson, author of Minor Characters and Door Wide Open.

"No one who reads this delightful, absorbing account of a teenage boy’s summer of initiation will ever forget the brilliant characters or the remarkable city—New York in the sixties—which John Skoyles brings so eloquently to life."—Margot Livesey, author of Eva Moves the Furniture.

John Skoyles guides us through 1960s New York, a city we only thought we knew. Against a backdrop of late-night radio airwaves featuring talk-show kings like Long John Nebel, the sixteen-year-old pairs up with his Uncle Fred, a Mob associate and man-about-town who presses him into the seamy underworld of con games and call girls. At the same time, his Aunt Linda finds him a job as a messenger at Paramount Pictures on Times Square, where she works as a secretary and where Michael Caine and Jane Fonda make cameo appearances.

From the bars and swank apartments of Manhattan’s Upper East Side to 42nd Street flophouses and haunts like Hubert’s Freak Show, he comes face to face with New York’s most comic, absurd, and sometimes dangerous seductions.

As his aunt notices his transformation, she reveals a shocking side of her own that will twist and charge his journey into adulthood, and Linda and Fred engage in an escalating rivalry for his allegiance.

Secret Frequencies spins from deadpan hilarity to unflinching bleakness in graceful turns. With pathos, wit, and searing realism, this memoir joins the ranks of classic coming of age narratives.