Going Home Book

Going home on an Easter Sunday, Andrew Lazar must confront his distant and embittered father, Jimmy Lazar, a one-time talented minor league baseball player and Vietnam vet whose foot was amputated during the war. Although he is now recuperating from a serious heart attack, Jimmy Lazar has never recovered from his antagonism towards his son for disappointing him. His own bitterness and anger isolate him from everyone including his wife.

While Andrew Lazar faces these demons, he must also struggle against his own. At a time when AIDS sufferers fought against the dual enemies of disease and ignorance, he loses one war while he achieves victory in the other. And while transcending his own suffering, he paradoxically offers his parents a chance to reform their lives as well.

Going Home is a play about many things. It is a play about AIDS, a play about popular and unpopular wars, about shattered dreams and even about baseball. But most importantly, it is not all fiction. It is dedicated to one Paul Severino because it chronicles, in many ways, his real life struggles. His heroism inspired this play as it must all those who believe in the human determination to survive and prevail over suffering.