In his new coming-of-age novel, this Los Angeles screenwriter returns to his Valley Stream roots.

After a decades-long career as a successful screenwriter and film critic in Los Angeles, Gary Goldstein returns to his Valley Stream roots as inspiration for his newest and third novel, “Please Come to Boston.”

The book’s central character, 18-year-old Nicky DeMarco, breaks away from his sheltered Long Island upbringing in Franklin Square to attend his first year of college in Boston. The year is 1975 and in the big city, he is, in many ways, the odd man out. Along the way, the young man finds himself thrust into a romantic triangle with two fellow students: Joe, “a charismatic and kind-hearted jock,” and Lori, “a warm and adventurous psychology major.”

Suffice it to say, the tangled and torrid affair pushes Nicky to grapple with questions about his sexuality and identity in ways he never thought before. Goldstein’s novel is a vivid snapshot of a time not like our own: where exploring one’s sexual orientation and gender is as salient for so many Americans as it is fraught with risk and uncertainty.

But at its core, the novel is a classic coming-of-age journey into personhood — about the experiences that both reveal to us who we are and can just as easily leave us with more questions than answers.

“It’s so interesting the kind of impact that certain moments in your younger life have on the rest of your life,” said Goldstein, who frequently jumps the novel forward in time as we see how each character forges their separate path from this shared turning point.

As college is often to so many young Americans a dizzying time of personal exploration and finding one’s place in the world, noted Goldstein, it was, for him, the novel’s perfect backdrop to wrestle with one of the novel’s biggest questions: how one can we live authentically? And why do so many of us often come up short?

“College is a new environment where you deal with a compressed amount of change with no parental control or advisory and you have to start from scratch,” he said. “When you’re in the middle of these big life transitions, unshackled by home and family, you often don’t think about how the actions we take moment by moment affect the future.”

The novel oscillates back and forth in time to see how these decisions play out in the larger context of the characters’ lives for better or for worse. Life can often surprise you for the better when “how much of what we expect from our life doesn’t always turn out the way we would have expected back in the day, but often turns out even better than we could have expected.”

But Goldstein’s novel is also grounded by the fact that while some can claim their authenticity, others must sacrifice or put away aspects of themselves to survive and adapt to society.

“Not everybody has the opportunity to live authentically. Based upon where we come from, social pressures, all of that, not everybody can always be the person they feel they are,” said Goldstein.

The ability to be authentic can come easier to some more than others, but in general, it takes a certain degree of grit and perseverance to practice authenticity, noted Goldstein, something that like a muscle gets better, the more you work it.

This is the first time Goldstein has drawn upon his own experience growing up in Valley Stream, a graduate of Valley Stream North High School, and later attending college at Boston University.

The novel’s detailed description of Franklin Square and the surrounding neighborhood are steeped in his nostalgic recollections of his community. One of his fondest memories of Valley Stream is his brief stint in the retail world, working at the beloved and now-defunct Sam Goody record store in Green Acres.

“I worked in the tape department where we sold eight track tapes and cassettes and it was just a blast,” he said. “It was the record store on Long Island. And my experience in Valley Stream was definitely a place to prepare me for the world at large.”

Though Goldstein admits the life choices he’s made are wholly different from those of the characters who inhabit his novel, he hopes audiences can read his book and be motivated through his characters to find the “wherewithal to really explore their true selves.”

“Please Come to Boston” will be out on Sept. 10. It’s available now for pre-order via all local and online booksellers including at: amzn.to/4b2dL8L.

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