“In 1952, age seventeen and in the middle of the sweatiest part of August, I stood outside of a bus depot in North Georgia hill country, waiting to board a big-tired but worn-out looking diesel. Despite sweating long enough, despite it being clear as Christmas that I had to board the bus. At its open door, I froze stiff as a ramrod.”

Picking up from his first memoir, Eating Dirt, William Charles Conner steps onto the bus that will carry him from his humble beginnings in the Blue Ridge Mountains to his first years of manhood as he reports for Naval duty in California during the Korean War. There, he encounters hazing, friendship, and authority, and grows ever more driven to move himself up from his meager beginnings. Assigned to the Naval Postgraduate School as a dental technician, he begins to seek new aspirations in life – developing male friendships, courting potential girlfriends, and training as an opera singer. With each new experience, he weighs the seesaw in his mind: is this good fortune or must he prove his worth?

Boy Jumps Over Moon continues Conner’s coming of age with a story that is at times raucous and endearing, at times humble and poignant. We see how a young man navigates those many crucibles – first drink, first drive, first kiss, first fight – all with a wit and aplomb that makes the reader root for him all the more. Conner imbues his adventures with vivid illustration and deep emotional resonance, turning each moment – from bartending his boss’s parties to drives along the Monterey Bay shores, from the Pacific coast festivals to the Shardis reunions back home – into a propelling narrative that carries the reader toward his next installment.

More about the author: Leveraging GI Bill benefits, the author went on to enroll at Emory at Oxford College. Within three years, he was accepted into Emory University School of Medicine on a full scholarship and graduated with his medical degree in 1962. Dr. Conner began his residency at Emory in the Department of Psychiatry and later served on the faculty. His story concludes in the third book of his trilogy, Out of Penumbra.