Tyrone and Myles
When Tyrone Odam suffers a massive stroke, it stir up his younger brother Myles’ childhood memories and events that led to their estrangement. Myles’ daily visits to the hospital allows the brothers to reconnect, leading to the revealing of family secrets, secrets withheld by their Aunt Josephine, a surrogate mother figure who had stepped in when the family court ruled their mother an incapable guardian. Myles begins to remember powerful incidents in his life in detail, from the violence his brother inflicted upon him and on their mother’s lover, to his own journey toward charitable services caring for the poor and dying. In the end, Tyrone dies without providing Myles with answers to questions about their life. Myles now faces a new solitary journey. Will he endure it?
A US citizen born and raised in Japan, Alban Kojima earned an M.A in musicology from Temple University and an M.S. in information science from Drexel University in Philadelphia. In 1988, he became Japanese Studies Informationist for Penn Libraries at the University of Pennsylvania, at the same time he taught a graduate seminar entitled Japanese Studies Resources and Problems of Research. Since late-October 2012, Kojima has focused on writing. He has published in Tokyo, Japan, Yuzo Kayama and His Music: A Global Fascination (Sairyusha, 2014) and Alexei Sultanov (Alpha-Bata Books, 2017). Coal Boy is Kojima’s first work of fiction. He lives in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.
