Paperback - The Long Way Here - Book One - Before I Knew My Name

Before I Knew My Name
Book One of The Long Way Here
by Joshua McCray

A novel about identity, memory, and the long road to becoming yourself.

At forty-five, Joaquin Aberra has built a life that looks stable from the outside—a government job in Washington, DC, a therapist he trusts, and a miniature Goldendoodle named Clark who has claimed most of the bed.

What he hasn’t figured out is how to actually live in it.

He is also, still, the five-year-old boy who stood on a sidewalk in New Mexico and watched his mother drive away.

Before I Knew My Name moves between two timelines: a boy becoming, and a man still in the middle of it.

From the Navajo Nation to Chicago to Phoenix to Washington, DC, Joaquin carries the weight of everything that shaped him—an absent father, a mother who left, and a grandmother who rebuilt her life from nothing and demanded he do the same.

Now, in middle age, he is still searching—for stability, for connection, and for the kind of love he has never quite believed was meant for him.

Hilarious, heartbreaking, and deeply human, this debut novel explores what it means to survive your past—and whether it’s ever possible to outgrow it.