August Greenleaf's Last 7,000 Days: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Miraculous

“The following pages tell a true story; I know because it’s my story. As I sit comfortably at my desk, here in my den, I share with you, my reader, the knowledge that I will die this afternoon. I am as sure of this elemental fact as the eagle is that he can fly or the fish that he can swim. Flanders Cremation Service has already been notified, and by Saturday at this time—if my wishes are carried out properly—I will be ashes. From then on, in this world, August Nathaniel Greenleaf will be just a memory. I can only hope that those whom I’ve loved will remember me with fondness, and perhaps a little forgiveness. Lord knows I have not always been easy to live with.”

Thus begins the memoir of August Greenleaf, a troubled but gifted boy who has always known that someday, something miraculous would happen to him—even before he knew the meaning of the word miraculous. As is true of us all, August’s story begins with his birth, which, in his case, he recalls clearly and in superlative detail. In addition, he is able to see a stately, white Victorian house that sits among the weeds near the southern shore of Jamaica Bay in Queens, New York, less than 300 yards from his family’s seventh-floor living room window. No one else can see the house, yet August knows it’s there. This dissonance adds to his anxiety, exacerbates his childhood phobias, and leads him to suspect that he is not so much gifted as weird.

August Greenleaf’s Last 7,000 Days is a moving and insightful bildungsroman that follows its sensitive, intelligent protagonist as he makes his way in a challenging, sometimes tragic world. With heartache and humor, August learns to cope with love and loss and eventually comes to understand his uncanny gift of memory and connection to the supernatural.