John Nicholas Gross

Prisoners in Paradise John Nicholas Gross

What would you do to survive as a pre-teen American, cut off 5000 miles from home in a strange country, suddenly finding yourself living alone with your little brother and a violent, schizophrenic stranger who, just months before used to be your mother? Prisoners in Paradise is the real life, picaresque recounting of a rural Maine boy forced to cope with his mentally ill mother in her self-destructive, nomadic ramblings for several years across the Greek countryside in the early 70s. As she stumbles from one disaster to the next, her son relies on a combination of wit, persistence, and resilience to overcome the ongoing onslaught of challenges they face, including a stream of unscrupulous grifters exploiting his mother's unraveling mental state. At first hostile and dismissive of anything Greek, he adapts and comes to appreciate the beauty of the ancient culture's language, history and colorful music. Taken out of school by their mother, the brothers turn their idle time and energy to master the national sport - soccer - eventually besting the locals at their own game. After five years living as virtual baggage in their mother's ill-fated quest, the brothers concoct a speculative plan to escape from their ordeal and return to their home in northern Maine.