A bittersweet coming-of-age story that quietly bores to the essence of friendship and how it survives even as it is destined to change. “So outrageous and so true.... the book rockets along, powered by the high octane of Cohen’s candor [and] off-beat observations.” — The New York Times Book Review Raised in an affluent suburb on the North Shore of Chicago, Rich Cohen had a cluster of interesting friends, but none more interesting than Jamie Drew. Fatherless, reckless, and lower middle class in a place that wasn’t, Jamie possessed such an irresistible insouciance and charm that even the teachers called him Drew-licious. Through the high school years of parties and Cub games and girls, of summer nights on the beach and forbidden forays into the blues bars of Chicago’s notorious South Side, the two formed an inseparable bond. Even after Cohen went to college in New Orleans (Jamie went to Kansas) and then moved to New York, where he had a memorable interlude with the legendary New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell, Jamie remained oddly crucial to his life. A New York Times Notable Book Winner of the Great Lakes Book Award and the 21st Century Award from the Chicago Public Library “Lake Effect draws its characters with a sure hand. . . . Cohen's connection to his past seems to remain strong.” — The New York Times “So outrageous and so true. . . . the book rockets along, powered by the high octane of Cohen’s candor [and] off-beat observations.” — The New York Times Book Review “Contains lines so heartbreakingly apt and funny I stopped to reread constantly. Cohen is a natural.” —Jonathan Lethem “Cohen writes with confidence and humor, and he deftly evokes the aimlessness of adolescence.” — Chicago Sun-Times “Cohen . . . has taken the everyday stuff of life and made it joyously readable. The mundane becomes richly evocative in his hands. The usual becomes unusual, the boring becomes interesting, the sweet becomes bittersweet, and Lake Effect becomes the proverbial book you can't put down.” — Milwaukee Journal Sentinel “Arresting and thoughtful. . . . Cohen brings back the flavor of the '80s culture with insight and humor." — The Washington Post “Cohen has written a fine book.” — Chicago Tribune “A universal story of youth, maturity and love, Lake Effect is a probing meditation on the passage of time, an accomplished book.” — Bookpage A "New York Times Notable Book Winner of the Great Lakes Book Award and the 21st Century Award from the Chicago Public Library Raised in an affluent suburb on the North Shore of Chicago, Rich Cohen had a cluster of interesting friends, but none more interesting than Jamie Drew. Fatherless, reckless, and lower middle class in a place that wasn't, Jamie possessed such an irresistible insouciance and charm that even the teachers called him Drew-licious. Through the high school years of parties and Cub games and girls, of summer nights on the beach and forbidden forays into the blues bars of Chicago's notorious South Side, the two formed an inseparable bond. Even after Cohen went to college in New Orleans (Jamie went to Kansas) and then moved to New York, where he had a memorable interlude with the legendary "New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell, Jamie remained oddly crucial to his life. Exquisite and taut, Lake Effect is a bittersweet coming-of-age story that quietly bores to the essence of friendship and how it survives even as it is destined to change. RICH COHEN is the author of Tough Jews and The Avengers. His work has appeared in The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, among many other publications. He is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone. He lives in New York City. Part One In summer we slept on the beach. We would park our cars on a side street and hike through the trees to the ravine and then down to a secret little shore that only we knew about. We would get a fire going and drink red wine and look at the lights winding along the north coast and, to the south, at the haze above Chicago. Out on the lake, we could see the red hazards of ships, and sometimes a speedboat splashed its tiny wake onto the rocky sand. Jamie told stories about the lake, which he said was over a thousand feet deep, and about the ships that had gone down beyond the horizon, voices vanishing in the cold water. When the wine was gone, we sat talking about girls and fights, or what we would do next week or next month. Who could see beyond next month? There were a lot of us on the beach, the usual crew. Tom Pistone, who wished he had been a teenager in the fifties, drove a '61 Pontiac GTO, walked with a swagger, and dated girls in polka dots. Ronnie Flowers, who tagged after us like a mascot, was simpleminded and easy to fool and knew just one way to deal with people–as the butt of a joke. Tyler White, a genius or a fool, spent hours watching construction sites. Of all those friends, the one I remember best is Jamie Drew. Looking back, I see that Jamie was the