Thirty Years Hence

A story of two women in NYC in 1973: Michelle Cooper, age twenty three, is despairing and without direction, having barely survived the turbulent household of her parents, and her own adolescent foray into sixties' hippiedom. Forty-something Ida Birnbaum, a Queens, NY wife and mother, and survivor of Auschwitz concentration camp, thirty years later battles her own malaise during a serious and potentially damaging midlife crisis. Like many folks during the so-called "Me Decade", both Michelle and Ida indulge in hedonistic and self-destructive activities and then must deal with the consequences. They each turn for support to their evolving friendship and to characters such as Theo, an idealistic young immigrant who lives in an Upper West Side SRO hotel and works for a telephone prayer service run by Charles, another Holocaust survivor, and self-fashioned spiritual guru. Both Michelle and Ida, Ida's husband, and even Paul, a white supremacist who stalks Michelle after a one-night stand, seek psychological healing via another of Charles' creations. The Rogen Treatment Program is a unique process wherein participants "experience" the Holocaust and, through a kind of aversion therapy, conquer their respective individual demons.

Since childhood, the author has had the parallel interests of psychology and writing/literature. After spending her twenties writing and earning a living at menial jobs, she spent the next thirty or so years as a psychotherapist and social worker, finding time to write whenever possible. Now retired, Ms. Beck-Clark hopes for her writing to have the same positive impact as her work as a clinician.

Her writing career began with the publication of several nonfiction articles. In 1999 her creative nonfiction book, Concurrent Sentences: A True Story of Murder, Love and Redemption, was published by New Horizon Press. A screenplay adaptation is in process. She's recently published flash fiction and essays online, along with a paperback poetry collection, The Zen of Forgetting. Thirty Years Hence is her second novel; the first remains unpublished, and the third is underway. The author lives with her adult special needs son in Yonkers, New York.

Keywords - Seventies, Me Generation, Holocaust, Drug Use, Self-help Groups, White Supremacy, Pre-DNA Pregnancy, New York City, Friendship, Women's Movement