Diver
On the morning that his father, Navy deep-sea diver Mac Macoby, dies of a heart attack, 12-year-old Robert is engulfed by the memories that tie them together. The memories come in fragments, some broken, some incomplete, but together they form the portrait of a man shaped by the tides of history, not a hero's life but a heroic one, nonetheless. Diver is about one California family in the 1960s, and about every family, a novel about the rigors of military life amid the turbulence of the counterculture movement, a novel of how memory can fail us, serve us, and support us through loss.
What readers have said
"There is powerful storytelling at play in Buzbee's latest book. The well-known portrait of a parent as seen through the child's lens is elevated through Buzbee's original framework and unadorned honesty. Every recounted memory is somehow depicted intimately while avoiding sentimentality—and this quality had me quickly turning pages."
Lit Stack
"A thoughtful and moving, but artfully unsentimental, depiction of a son's love. Buzbee achieves a complex amalgam of celebration and lament; his narrator adores his father and sees his 'heroic life' as a model of manhood, but precisely because of this adoration, he experiences his dad's loss as a catastrophic blow. Overall, it's an admirably meditative exploration of the depths and travails of a father-son relationship."
Kirkus Reviews
"Diver proves to be one of those books that walks straight into your heart, parks at dead center and never leaves. Nor would you wish it to. An almost shockingly tender account of a son's unalloyed love for his late father, across time and geography… Buzbee's tale feels both cinematic and nakedly personal, told in simple yet shining prose."
San Francisco Chronicle
"Diver is a gem, engaging from first page to last. It is honest, sincere, genuine, inspiring and heartbreaking, but mostly it is full of love. It is Buzbee's finest book."
Andy Weiner, author of Down by the River
"This 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."
SF Gate