Summer of '87

About the Book

Every move I make, every decision I employ, every thought in my brain and every word I speak are based purely on who I am. Who I am is based on the culmination of my reactions and internalization of every situation ever placed in front of me. But even with a lifetime of situations and a lifetime of my reactions shaping my outlook on life, there is one specific moment that defined me. Every other moment bent, formed and shaped that definition to finely tweak who I became. However, fundamentally, I was formed from that one moment. This is the lead up to that moment. When my father moved his family to escape the world and his problems, we only saw that new problems arose and the inevitability that the originally problems didn’t go away, they just changed. This is my story.

About the Author

Erik Kratzer was born in Moline, Illinois, in 1977, the first child of Monique and John Kratzer. After his father died at the age of nine, he and his sister were raised by his mother. Parts of his childhood were spent in Southern Ohio before his father’s death. He aided his mother the best he could in the rearing of his sister, as his mother worked numerous jobs to support the family, while attending school to build a career.