Corvette Odyssey: The True Story of One Man's Path to Roadster Redemption - Hardcover

Berkson, Terry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1592282946 ISBN 13: 9781592282944

Publisher: UNKNO, 2004

Synopsis

It was a car fanatic's nightmare. While Terry Berkson was visiting his newborn son at the hospital, his '63 Corvette-a gift from his late father-was stolen off the streets of Brooklyn.
Berkson didn't have theft insurance, and he couldn't get over the loss. Detectives wrote his car off. It's been chopped up for parts, they told him. He would never find it. His wife and his sister-in-law told him he was crazy. But he didn't give in-he posted reward notices and cruised neighborhoods where he thought a stolen Corvette might pop up.
In his incredible search, he was aided by an unlikely coterie of understanding officials, sympathetic car thieves, as well as repo men, bus drivers on the lookout for him, and desperate cases who wanted to help him in unexpected ways, like the woman who claimed she had seen the car, and who was wearing almost nothing when he showed up to talk with her. He plunged into the secretive and dangerous world of "chop shops," where cars are cut down to nothing and sold for untraceable parts. He lurked in the dim corners of New York's most secluded hiding places, like "King Kong's Cave" in the Bronx, where stolen cars are abandoned and set on fire. He learned how professional thieves plan and pull off grand theft auto, and he finally located his car-but what happens when he does is both terrifying and exhilarating.
An original blend of philosophy-why do we love our cars the way we do?-the nuts and bolts of crime, urban adventure, and the underbelly of America's car-crazed culture, Corvette Odyssey is sure to find a place on the shelves of auto fans and lovers of a fine tale well told.

About this title

About the Author:

Terry Berkson has an MFA in Creative Writing from Brooklyn College. His articles have appeared in New York magazine, The New York Daily News Sunday Magazine, and Automobile magazine. He lives on a farm in upstate New York with his wife and children.

From Publishers Weekly:

At what point does determination become obsession and then sheer insanity? Most people would agree that at some point Berkson crosses that line, but their opinion on whether that is a good or bad thing may depend on what they think about old cars. Berkson tells the story of what happened after his beloved 1963 Corvette roadster was stolen off a Brooklyn street. Unfortunately for his wife, who'd been urging him to sell the car to add to their income, Berkson launches what becomes a nine-month-long hunt. With a family to support on his paltry unemployment checks (he had worked as an electrician), Berkson spends his days roaming the streets, looking for clues. He offers a reward, scours dumping grounds, stakes out a chop shop and has nightmares in which the car is torn up for spare parts. He chases down vaporous leads and mulishly butts his way through the bureaucratic police and insurance quagmire. Meanwhile, his wife grows angrier, eventually banishing him to the attic. At first, it's hard to have much sympathy for Berkson's monomaniacal quest—it is, after all, just a car—but this slim, honest memoir transcends that story. In Berkson's hands, the hunt becomes an attempt to realign his life and even reconnect with his dead father, making this an improbably meaningful account.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: UNKNO
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1592282946
• ISBN 13: 9781592282944
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 197