Listen: Nick Yetto, Clarksville author of "Sommelier of Deformity"
Nick Yetto of Clarksville has published his first novel, “Sommelier of Deformity,” and is at work on another, to examine the meaning of truth, about a real-life con woman who “cured” people through radio waves. Yetto’s picaresque novel is narrated by Buddy Hayes — “a connoisseur of the unwanted, a sommelier of deformity, a coveter of the unloved” — who lives a solitary life in a run-down upstate New York town, Ilium, residing with his mother and grandfather, a World War II veteran and a double amputee. Buddy suffers from scoliosis and his view of himself as ugly. He finds both love and work online as a web designer, pretending a familiarity with New York City. His life changes when a handsome black man, and one-time actor, is hired to care for his grandfather. Yetto, in this week’s Enterprise podcast, says he drew on his own love for his grandfather and his own desires as a young man to succeed in New York City to write the novel. While Yetto has found satisfaction with his life writing novels, and now a screenplay, as well as developing websites, as he and his wife raise their children in Clarksville, the closing chapter in his novel has Buddy Hayes riding a train to New York City.