ALAMEDA SUN

Novel Colors Alameda with Shades of Gray

September 13, 2002

By Julia Park

Andrew Winer's first novel, The Color Midnight Made, is a lovely, funny work of fiction and has the bonus of being set in the Island City. The novel evokes the gritty days in the 1990s when Alameda Naval Air Station was beginning to shut down, people were losing jobs and leaner times were coming.

Protagonist Conrad Clay is a 10-year-old white boy who is literally and figuratively colorblind. He lives off Webster Street on Pacific, and his best friend Loop, an African American boy, lives closer to the base, on Cypress. They go to the fictional Jack London Elementary School, where the population is predominantly black.

"They say I can't see colors," says Conrad after his diagnosis. "They're lying. I can see colors in people. Moms is yellow. Pops is camouflage. Our teacher Mr. Garabedian is tan like a weed. I got a color for everybody. Except me."

Conrad's father is a welder who's been laid off, and his mother works a day job; Conrad spends his afternoons and weekends skateboarding around town, in a landscape familiar to Island readers-the Estuary, Park Street, Central Avenue, the base, the beach. "Pacific hung off Webster like a dead arm. Gramma said our street reminded her of a boxer's face after fighting Mike Tyson. Houses missing, like knocked-out teeth," according to Conrad. Winer's depiction of Alameda is a grim portrayal of the tough streets in the West End and of the working men and women who lived there at the time.

Conrad's story is pervaded by a sense of gloom as his father loses his job, as his parents' marriage unravels, as other tragedies befall the family. He wanders through his world like a small explorer, taking dares and learning by trial and error, making discoveries that force him to grow up faster than he ought.

Winer, who lives in Southern California, lived in Alameda in his youth and saw first-hand some of the changes as the base shut down.

His vision of Alameda is a far cry from the bustle of redevelopment now underway, a reminder of how things once were in the city.

He takes some liberties with the locale-don't go looking for the Shamrock Pub on Park Street, for example-but as Winer said in an interview with the Alameda Sun, "The novel isn't a documentary about Alameda." Rather, the Island makes a suitable setting for this find coming-of-age novel.

Winer's concise prose offers a look at a boy-and an island-that is by turns heart-rending and laugh-out-loud funny-a bit late for summer reading, but still too good to miss.