An open letter to literary agents
This is a narrative memoir centered around my mother’s 2019 death from liver failure; and it’s also a true crime centered around my grandfather’s role in killing President Kennedy and how that led to my mothering marrying his son and getting pregnant with me at 16 years old. A working title has been Why I Called my Mother Wendy.
It’s around 82,000 words divided into five fleshy parts that could probably all be cut down to make the story flow faster. The over-arching quest is how to honor my mother, a woman who abandoned me when I was a kid, and to understand my grandfather’s part in history, which traces back to my childhood quest to understand the role of nature versus nurture when making choices about my future. Each part of the overarching story is a mini-memoir with motivations and plots building to the life-long theme of how to honor my mother regardless of nature versus nurture. In a way, this is a memoir about forgiveness happening too late for both people to see it.
My mother and grandfather in the center of all five parts; they are called: A Partin History, Stabbing Stretching Armstrong, Wrestling Hillary Clinton, Fighting Saddam Hussein, and Fooling Fidel Castro.
The first part A Partin History; it brings a reader up to speed on the 1950’s and 60’s Blood Feud between Hoffa and the Kennedy’s, with my speaking with the reader through a fourth-wall showing links to Baton Rouge and my family. It’s approximately 14,000 words divided among five chapters.
A Partin History begins with Wendy Partin’s five sentence obituary, then goes back to how my grandfather’s h her choice to abandon me. This becomes a history of my grandfather, Edward Grady Partin Sr.; he was the Baton Rouge Teamster leader famous for sending International Brotherhood of Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa to prison in the 1960’s, and whose fame continued for publicly defying Hoffa’s mafia family allies in the 1970’s. We called him Big Daddy; his rise in Baton Rouge parallels Hoffa’s rise nationally, but also shows how my dad became my dad and how he met my mother when they were both teenagers. This part of the overall story ends with my 1976 custody court records and all of our names listed, a bookend for my life with Wendy; it’s also when I’m around four years old and my memories begin to form.became part of Hoffa’s inner circle and how my dad (Edward Grady Partin Jr.) met my mother. My grandfather, who we all called Big Daddy, was by every definition a ruthless leader; before he agreed to testify against Hoffa, he had been charged with rape, kidnapping, murder, selling weapons to Cuba during the Cold War against Kennedy, and whose name litters the 1976 John. F. Kennedy assassination report. His son was the teenage drug dealer at my mom’s high school; she lost her virginity to him on an ill-fated evening, and I was the result. This story shows how my grandfather’s overlap with Hoffa and the mafia led to Wendy’s nervous breakdown and abandoning me; it’s also a history of Hoffa and the Teamsters and Kennedy’s assassination, and of films and books about Hoffa and the Kenendy’s with my grandfather as a key player in all of them. The link is his role in Martin Scorcese’s 2019 film about Hoffa and the mafia, The Irishman; Edward Partin Senior is portrayed as “Big Eddie” Partin. My grandfather’s role in The Irishman was being advertised in Baton Rouge as I stood by my mom’s hospital bed in intensive care during her final hours and pondered our life together.
The second part is a mini-memoir through the eyes of a Toddler.
Stabbing Stretch Armstrong is approximately 15,000 words divided among five chapters. This takes place over the summer of 1976. I’m living with my foster family during the court battles between my parents, which is shown through my young eyes. The events introduce and define Wendy Partin, Ed Partin Jr., and Big Daddy from a kid’s perspective. This part is called Stabbing Stretch Armstrong because I end up stabbing my super-hero toy after being literally stretched between my foster family and my dad, who did not accept the custody decision. This links to Big Daddy, who was in jail for kidnapping the young children of a fellow Teamster when he made a deal with Bobby Kennedy and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to spy on Hoffa in exchange for having his charges disappear. Nature versus nurture is, essentially, what my court custody records are discussing without me realizing it yet.
The third part is a teenage coming of age memoir set in 1989-1990.
Wrestling Hillary Clinton around 18,000 words divided among ten chapters. This story is centered around my high school wrestling coach and my quest to take on the three-time undefeated state champion at 145 pounds – a hairy brute named Hillary – in the 1990 Baton Rouge city wrestling tournament. That’s also the year Big Daddy died; his funeral was national news soon after my final wrestling match. My focus on Coach and my future show my conclusion on nature versus nurture. This part ends with me leaving for the army and Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait in 1990 and my service in the first Gulf war of 1990-1991. This follows something like a hero’s journey, but with Coach leading a team and running Louisiana wrestling and me observing how people treat him versus Big Daddy or any other so-called leader.
The fourth part is a war story set during and immediately after the first Gulf war.
Fighting Saddam Hussein is around 10,000 words in four chapters. My wrestling and my team are shown to be an allegory for war and our small team in the final battles, and I springboard into a role on President Bush Jr.’s and President Clinton’s quick-reaction forces; in 1993 Clinton releases the first part of the then-classified 1976 John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination Report, which completes gaps in my understanding of why Big Daddy sent Hoffa to prison. I become a team leader using methods from Coach, and end up with a brief stent on the Fort Bragg army wrestling team. As a true hero’s journey, this part ends a few years later when I return to Baton Rouge to attend Louisiana State University and be to be an assistant wrestling coach under Coach Dale Ketelsen, a 40-year deacon of his church, former olympian, and a legend in USA wrestling for having built LSU’s team from nothing to becoming ranked 4th nationally; he produced more All-American wrestlers than any of his peers, then began a wrestling program at the relatively poor high school where I began in 1986. Coach’s obituary takes center stage, and this story honors him by showing the ripple effects of his life. His influence leads me to want to honor my mother and father, regardless of our history together.
The final part is a true crime set Cuba in 2019.
Fooling Fidel Castro is around 10,000 words and in four chapters. What happened to me is shown by me being in Cuba during President Trump’s first term while using the last entrepreneurship visa waiver into Cuba from President Obama’s administration. I’m in Havana investigating the claims my grandfather sold weapons to Fidel Castro just before President Kennedy’s failed Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban missile crisis that brought America to the brink of nuclear war. Unknown to me, Wendy’s liver is failing and she only has a few weeks to live. Her story and my perception is shown through ambiguous voice mails that become hindsight when I rush to her side on 04 April 2019 and stay awake speaking to her in a coma until she dies early the next morning. What I say to her is full of our dark humor about Big Daddy’s role as Big Eddie in The Irishman; a few chapters in The Irishman’s 2004 memoir that made his film are pieces of the puzzle that explain what happened between Wendy and me in the 1970’s; but I realize it too late to share what I know with her. This part ends up showing that I honor my mother by writing a memoir with our lives life book-ended by her obituary and my custody report, with a lot of details in between that had global ripple-effects but are, in the end, less important than my mother’s life to me.
The overall story is a work in progress that will continue to evolve or change as I do; it will stop when an agent or publisher feels it’s ripe and ready for shelves. As of now, the title is planned to be either Why I Called My Mother Wendy, or named after one of the four parts.
I appreciate constructive feedback is appreciated.
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