Guys Like Us

On a Saturday morning, Mike Nolan, a hard-driving, hard-living lawyer in his early fifties was hit by a truck during a 40-mile bike ride on New Jersey’s Route 35 and given up for dead. But he didn’t die. After months of recovery, Mike looked the same as he always had. And yet, he had absolutely no memory. Guys Like Us, like a reverse memoir, is the attempt by his son to tell Mike who he is through recollections of Mike’s powerful career in law and tales of the Nolan family on the Jersey shore. The Nolans, a clan planted in Ocean County by Mike’s father, Joe, are people who suffer no fools, take no prisoners, and you had better have plenty of liquor in the house when they arrive. Three strong characters—Joe, Mike and Sean—dominate Guys Like Us. Add an enormous Cadillac that Joe and Sean bomb around in, with Sean behind the wheel at the ripe age of eight. Stir in the boardwalks and beaches of the Jersey shore and near-fatal family feuds, and the pot boils. Sean Nolan does not fall far from the tree. It doesn’t take long for him to realize he has to tell Mike, among many other things, how impossible he could be. And that dark secrets, long held in a young boy’s heart, are out of reach to him forever. Giving his father back his memory, warts and all, Nolan paints a poignant, often hilarious, portrait of their shared past.