Going On Alone

As Francesco Petrarch has the scattered rhymes of his Songbook, so Kate Adams has those in Paperboybut all scattered in the steady winds of Leo Adlers long life. And as Petrarch has his Laura, so Kate Adams has her love for Leo, made manifest over the course of three volumes collectively called Paperboy.
Known as Mister Baker (for his home town) and Mister Oregon (for his state), he lived in the same house for nearly a century, leaving a legacy of millions to Baker Cityand a mansion ready for the wreckers ball. He made one proposal in his lifeand then proceeded to live in the ruins of that rejection. Born in the same year as baseball itself, he attended every World Series for twenty yearswithout a home team to cheer.
This Leo watches a crystal ball shatter on his wall, here reassembled to show us a shade brought back to light as Orpheus tried to bring his Euridice. In Paperboy, con?dent of her poetic skills, Kate Adams never looks back.
In Going On Alone, the middle volume of Paperboy, she tells Leos story from the death of his mother to the sale of his business, from the end of the Depression to the beginning of what turns out to be his long retirement.
Faithfully following the arc of his life over the twentieth century, these three volumes slowly add up to more than straight biography, exploring the triumphs and tragedies, the loneliness and laughter, the terrible tenacity of one mans life in images that reach out to resonate in our own.