Colgate University Alumnus, CEO-turned-novelist Wayne Feinstein returned to his alma mater in Hamilton for Reunion Weekend, May 29 – 31, for an author event to share his new novel – Turning: a novel, which will drop on June 9 – and return to the pivotal place in his own story that would serve to inspire the memoir-esque fiction’s main character. 

“My own life experiences, at least at Colgate, informed Joe Frederick’s early life,” said Feinstein of his hero. 

Feinstein frequently refers to “Joe Fredericks … Joe” throughout the conversation, revealing how real a main character becomes to a writer as they pen them to life. 

The story sets a resonant tone for Feinstein’s generation, who came of age during college years marked by war and peace, protest and provocation to contemplate social justice. They entered an American workforce and culture groping to restore balance by centering self and defining success by climbing ladders where the rungs were titles and the reach was hours. Work was life, no value was placed on balance. Money and status defined success.  

And success defined manhood for Fredericks in the memoir-esque elegy that could be called a coming-of-age … again story, until the tale’s inciting incident spirals Joe into his search … for purpose … for redemption. 

Feinstein, like Fredericks, tragically lost a son when he was in his early 20s.  This loss clearly made Joe Fredericks’ journey in the narrative a cathartic one for the writer … it gave the hero two things that drive any narrative journey … his external want, to define a greater purpose for his life, which demanded redefining what success looked like and discovering the power of hope and happiness … and his internal need. To heal. 

As the author reflects on his choice of his alma mater – a modern-day Avalon – to begin his hero’s healing, he tears up when he finally says, “I couldn’t think of a better place.” 

“Hamilton…” Feinstein began wistfully as he sat comforted in the embrace of his alma mater’s college town on sunny, sentimental Reunion Weekend. 

The pause was palpable as the writer searched for words sufficient to describe his feelings for this place. 

“I imagine …” he trails off into thought, again. “Close friends of decades had all gone off to different colleges. Very few remain as passionate about their alma maters … as I remain about mine.” 

Remembering Colgate

Feinstein remembers Colgate as a “teaching college” where the faculty did a superb job of getting students to explore “where we were and figure out what mattered to us.” 

“It was two years after Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated. The Vietnam War …” Feinstein reflected. “current events … in the ether.” 

Feinstein studied history and philosophy at Colgate, working to graduate in three years, which he calls one of his greater regrets. 

“I wish I had stayed four years,” said Feinstein of his coming-of-age sojourn in the Mohawk Valley hills of Hamilton. 

In a homage to his affection for the pastoral campus and college town, Feinstein sends Joe Fredericks to college there, as well, where readers experience the advent of some of his more authentic life relationships, one a passionate romantic dalliance and the other what would be a lifelong friendship with Howard, a mentor … almost oracle archetype in the narrative. 

The closest thing Joe has to a genuine intimate connection when the story starts is Howard, who is unafraid to be painfully honest with Joe, and he is unafraid to receive that honesty from him. 

The tale told by Turning 

The inciting event in the story confronts both Joe and the reader on page one, the profit-driven Gotham executive learns that the son he has not seen in years since his divorce is dying and does not want to say goodbye. 

“The death of his son, Steven, forces him to realize how his ambition had no guardrails,” said Feinstein. “He abandoned his family, abandoned his children.” 

The character took care of his family financially, but children need an emotional connection. 

Said Feinstein, with almost a sadness for his protagonist, “and he had none.” 

The death of one child and the vulnerable hope that his sister might offer the forgiveness and redemption he must live with never knowing from her twin spirals the devastated dad into an examination of his life and times that inspires him to break completely from his corporate confines to take a soul-searching sabbatical … back to Hamilton … to “sort out the rest of his life.” 

About the author

Prior to penning Turning, Feinstein served as CEO to a major Jewish non-profit, where he enjoyed great success, but like Joe, sacrificed “80-90 hours per week” for it. 

He too took a sabbatical from a flourishing career, an almost month-long trip to Israel that he took with his son. 

“It was a great father-son experience,” Feinstein recalled. 

He used that time to reflect on a love of literature he is proud to have passed to his own children and decided to slow down and settle into the solace and solitude of a writer’s life. 

Feinstein has finished three novels since deep-diving into a “next chapter” of his own as a writer. Two were thrillers. TURNING: a novel – a dramatic departure from the suspense-thriller genre he has explored and historical fiction, the frame for his current WIP – is his first published work.  It aligns with a well-understood insight into any ‘new’ writer’s first book or play or screenplay … it is laced with autobiographical elements. Feinstein smiled at the query before keenly quipping, “It’s fiction.  But …” 

The protagonist and the man who pens him both came of age at Colgate University in upstate New York’s Mohawk Valley, both lost a son in their early 20s, both to sharp turns to embark on career changes, and both find new joy in second marriages. 

“Be careful about giving sabbaticals,” Feinstein jokingly directed his advice to corporate leaders, where the experience led both Feinstein and his story’s protagonist to leave the life they had been living upon their return. 

This article originally appeared on Observer-Dispatch: Colgate Alum Wayne Feinstein talks debut novel at reunion weekend

Reporting by Cara Dolan Berry, Utica Observer Dispatch / Observer-Dispatch

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By Cara Dolan Berry, Utica Observer Dispatch | USA TODAY Network