Tom Wolfson was raised in New York City during the 50's and 60's, spending every summer of his childhood at family property in Wellfleet on Cape Cod. In 1990 he moved permanently to Wellfleet with his wife and daughter and has since pursued acting and writing.
Based on his life, The Blackfish Inheritance is a sweeping bildungsroman about a man attempting to escape the outsize influence of his Dali-esque father and come into his own.
Leon Perlman's travails begin with a privileged upbringing in New York City's Upper East Side, marred by spectacular family feuds between his famously eccentric father, a renowned artist and writer, and his blue-blooded mother.
Alternately serious, hilarious, and poignant, Leon evokes the iconic Holden Caulfield and Jack Kerouac as he struggles with alienation and a lack of direction as a young student before heading to Los Angeles. There he works in the plumbing business, tries on the life of an insurance agent, and eventually becomes involved in a cult. Returning to the East Coast, Leon longs for a loving reconciliation with his difficult father. Even after his father's gone, Leon finds himself wrestling with his ghost—with the help of a Wampanoag medicine man.
This lyrically written creative nonfiction novel encompasses a range of intriguing themes, including elitism, the tumultuous '60s, the insurance industry, shamanism, spirituality, Carl Jung, and psychology—offering a compelling journey through human interactions to which everyone can relate.