The cover of Jim Zervanos’ fourth book and the author reading from it during the novel’s launch at Main Point Books in Wayne Nov. 11.
Ask Bala Cynwyd’s Jim Zervanos if his latest book – a sweet, funny, coming-of-age novel about a Greek American growing up outside Philly – is autobiographical and you receive a resounding, not really: “The literal story is entirely made up but it’s more personal to me than anything I’ve written.”
Indeed, Zervamps calls Gyro’s protagonist, Johnny Demos, his “surrogate.”
Like Johnny, Zervanos says he was once a young man “dreaming of the life of an artist and writer but reluctant to take that unpredictable path, afraid of failure, of forsaking the seemingly comfortable path.”
Zervanos quit Temple’s law school to pursue an master’s degree in English and a life in the arts. When he’s not teaching English at Penncrest High School, he’s writing and painting colorful pop-art canvases in his garage.
Similarly, Johnny Demos left the security of his family’s restaurant business to chase an acting career in New York City.
Zervanos draws on other personal experiences: his Greek grandfather who ran the beloved Stockyard Inn in Lancaster, Pa. (“Kornfield” in the novel) and his own jobs there during high school and college.
Another point of reference: Zervanos’ trips to NYC in his twenties to visit artsy, “kindred spirit” friends from college whose lives he considered “exciting and enviable” at the time.
The publication of American Gyro was a journey in itself.
It started as a short story in grad school, became a novel when Zevanos was 29, had to be rewritten after 9/11, then rewritten again after his personal health crisis, which chronicled in his first memoir, That Time I Got Cancer: A Love Story.
“I poured all of the love and gratitude I felt for being alive, and for my family, and for all the good fortune I’ve enjoyed in my life – all the hope I have for my two young sons – into the writing and the story,” Zervanos tells SAVVY. “This energy transformed the book into what it is in its final form.”
A rollicking, big-hearted family ride, American Gyro is Zervanos’ fourth book and second novel. “I think it’s my best.”
American Gyro is available at Main Point Books and Narberth Bookshop. Jim Zervanos will speak at Bala Cynwyd Library Dec. 10 at 7 p.m. His second memoir was recently renamed The English Teacher: A Year on the Brink with Generation Z.
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