The Maury Nonesuch

This team-written work is a rollicking and sometimes nostalgic comedy about coming-of-age in the golden era of the early Nineteen Sixties in America. A 'Navy brat, ' known only as 'the boy, ' arrives at Maury High School in Norfolk, Virginia, from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in 1961.

Joining the staff of The Maury News, the school newspaper, as a photographer, the boy works his way up to editor-in-chief as he meets his classmates through a wide variety of school sports, extra-curricular activities and clubs while progressing toward graduation in 1963.

He develops special friendships with three male classmates, a dozen-odd female characters and his expanding school newspaper staff against a backdrop of the changing South, the Cold War and the vibrant world of ubiquitous music, especially Rock 'n' Roll. The narrative is interspersed with recollections by the authors, many of them former staff members of the newspaper (hence The Maury Nonesuch title).

The specters of Commodore Maury, the Goddess of Ouija, a symbolic Leviathan and an obscure mathematician stir the lively plot and provide a mock-serious commentary wrap as the boy orchestrates his friends' slapstick struggle to find dates for the senior prom. All things resolve well in the end, thanks to the false premise that the boy is "the world's best kisser."

Memories abound: old-fashioned Southern hospitality and morality, Sandbridge, sailing, crab cakes, rare steaks on the beach under the stars, the naughty Hot Nuts Band and several others.

Readers can write their own cherished memories on blank pages.

The lead writer and editor of The Maury Nonesuch, Wilson F. Engel, III, Ph.D., was formerly the editor of The Maury News. He now lives in Arizona and writes fiction and poetry. Special thanks among those who share the copyright go to his MHS '63 Classmates Shirley Grissom and Wayne Martin.