Esse Quam Videri

ESSE QUAM VIDERI Jonathan Charlesworth Winslow, known to all as Jaycee, is a mildly dyslexic, slightly overweight child of divorce locked in the grip of his troubled adolescence until he accidently meets Calyx Marie Townsend on the platform of Pennsylvania Station. Set in the late 1940s, the saga of their consequent relationship in a small Connecticut seaside town traces the vicissitudes of his emotional and intellectual growth as he struggles to conquer his limitations over the course of a year. Sent away to prep school, he is aided by his teachers and his Southern roommate, Stuart Longstreet, while at home he is taken under the wing of Jules LeBlanc, an elder and gruff mariner who becomes his seagoing mentor. Esse Quam Videri, the motto of his new school, means “To be rather than to seem to be.” Accordingly, this is a story of being and becoming, of love and hate, belief and nonbelief, bias and rectitude.