Today marks the 75th anniversary of the birth of our polymath friend Anthony Barcellos. Bruma Publications of California State University, Fresno, honors his memory with the posthumous publication of his second novel, Count Me Out: The Education of Paul Francisco. In 2013 Tony drafted its original manuscript, which I recently had the honor of editing. He described the novel in pure Tony fashion:

      “A square peg in a family fashioned to fit into traditional round holes, Paul Francisco has to figure out what to do with his life. He grows up in a bubble of Portuguese-speaking Azorean culture in California’s great Central Valley, where the default career involves cows and farming and raising the next generation of agrarians. The one readily accepted alternative is the seminary, a vocation to which no one could possibly object, while fulfilling his grandmother’s fondest dream; but that escape route has its own problems. What is a square peg to do?”

When Tony shared his draft of Count Me Out with me, he described it as NOT a sequel to his first novel, Land of Milk and Money, but instead “a parallel narrative” recounting his fictional alter ego Paul Francisco’s biography. Instead of flashbacks, he presented its plot in chronological order, from Paul’s earliest memories growing up on the family dairy farm outside Porterville, to his mathematics studies, teaching assistant experience, journalism, government, computers, a passion for classical music (especially opera), the start of his career as a math professor — and of course the lifelong bonds with his family and heritage.

Bruma Publications’ director Diniz Borges has called Count Me Out “…a quiet, powerful coming-of-age novel that traces the intellectual, emotional, and cultural formation of a Portuguese-American boy growing up in California’s Central Valley. Told through sharp observation and gentle humor, Anthony Barcellos captures family, faith, language, and education as lived experience — moments small in scale yet lasting in consequence. Rooted in immigrant life and attentive to the passing of time, this book bridges generations, offering older readers recognition and younger ones inheritance: a record of how lives are shaped, questions are learned, and identity is carried forward, not as nostalgia, but as continuity.”

Count Me Out is available on Amazon in hardcover, paperback and eBook formats: https://www.amazon.com/Count-Me-Out-Education-Francisco-ebook/dp/B0GNC8DHF4/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0

Katharine F. Baker, editor of Count Me Out.