When author Danny Clune was seven years old, he experienced a traumatic accident that changed the course of his life It left a hole in his life that he would spend a lifetime repairing. In Leaving Wayne, Clune tells his coming-of-age story that takes place in rural New York State and northeastern Pennsylvania in the 1950s and '60s.

This colorful memoir narrates the struggles of surviving shame, poverty, abuse, and succeeding in an era that went from party phone lines to cell phones, from 45s to MP3s, and from sock hops to mosh pits. Leaving Wayne tells of Clune's childhood in a family with seven children; his struggles with addiction; his recovery; his stints as an English teacher, chef, and restaurateur in Upstate New York; his work abroad with mental health services; and the ways that 9/11 affected his life and his profession.

Throughout this story, Clune shows how the grit of rural life conflicted with the influences of prosperity and modernity that gradually overtook him and molded him into the person he became.