AVON-BY-THE-SEA — Former Asbury Park resident and first-time author Paul Bomba will discuss his novel “No Lifeguard on Duty,” highlighting the history, with personal insights, of the Asbury Park riots in 1970 on Thursday, May 15, at 5 p.m. at the Avon Marina Building, located at 2 Main St.
Published in the summer of 2023, the 492-page historical fiction work provides a deeper understanding of the Asbury Park riots that occurred for one week in July of 1970, as part of ongoing unrest following the Civil Rights Movement of the late 1960s. The book tracks the lives of three unlikely teenage friends, Adam, Mollie and Howard, for four years following the riots.
At the event, sponsored by the Avon-By-The-Sea Public Library, Bomba will discuss his novel for about 35 to 40 minutes, accompanied by a multimedia slideshow with 1960s and 1970s music, vintage photos and postcards to guide passages from the book that will be read aloud.
Afterward, Bomba will take questions from the audience, and the book will be available for purchase at $19.99, cash only.
The first half of the novel is based on the factual history of the riots with research conducted by Bomba, where the fictional characters and some fictional events were mapped over top.
“I had read all the old newspaper articles and history that I could, and the riots were pretty intense for about four or five days so the first half of the book, it’s almost an hour-by-hour description of what’s going on with these three main characters who are teenagers at the time,” said Bomba.
By the time he started writing the second half of the book, he said, he felt his characters were so well developed that he described the process as “them talking to me, and telling me what they were going to do next,” resulting in the last portion being written within five months.
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