Grass Through Pavement

"With razor-sharp, witty, and poignant prose, Trivelas's stunning debut novel is a fast-moving story from start to finish." - Robin Meloy Goldsby, author of Piano Girl Playbook [Backbeat]

He was nineteen, running from a shotgun wedding, when the Navy gave him an exit. What followed was four decades he never could have predicted.

Grass Through Pavement traces one man's long, unruly journey — from an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin to the free-love streets of San Francisco, through marriages and affairs, Transcendental Meditation and psychedelics, fatherhood and hard-won wisdom, and finally a reckoning in the streets of Hanoi that changes everything. Vietnam is where Lucien's story begins. What it becomes is something far larger.

With a narrative voice reminiscent of Eve Babitz, Peter Trivelas blends introspection with vivid storytelling — candid, funny, and surprisingly tender. A novel about desire, consequence, and our innate human capacity to keep growing, at any age.

For readers who believe that becoming yourself is a lifelong project.