Larry Strauss was born to an actress mother and composer father you likely know well from years of prime time television and music.
He took the blessing of his creative gifts in other directions first as an author of several fiction novels that have drawn on his personal experience. Then talent in another direction took him to teaching, a craft that requires, at its best, a genius for entertainment and compassion. Teaching, not some fall-back career but one of the most complicated undertakings possible if you want to do it without your students daydreaming, sneaking peeks at hidden cellphones or nodding off in class. For Larry it has been three decades of great teaching, an example of which you can see by the author he brought to the attention of his inner city students of color.
Larry took first hand lessons in compassion living with a brother suffering autism, schizophrenia and epilepsy, any one of which would require endless patience and love and understanding of when acceptance had to override the desire to fix it all. It was a time, heaven help us, when parents were blamed for outcomes not their fault.
What Larry revealed regarding the acceptance of disabilities and his own spiritually elevated feelings at the death of his brother left me teary and smiling. See what you think.
His 5th and latest novel  Light Man tells the tale of New York City that is crumbling under the force of crime and deterioration, garbage and vermin. With humor and humanity he weaves a story of love bewildered, and a friendship forged in an attempt to ward off the misery.
It is best to hear Larry talk about his family and his own choices in his own voice. See if your heart does not soar when you hear with whom his father studied music. Mine did. And, to see him talk about his parents’ challenges is a lesson in appreciation and understanding that often comes with children reaching adulthood.
Letters? Oh, yes! He has a treasure trove of found letters from his grandmother to his mother, and what you can learn from letters woman to woman is delicious. And, one correspondence with a possbily innocent former student now in jail. Shocking and then some.