What does it mean to succeed when the original plan falls apart? That is the question at the heart of After Pattee, a new memoir by author Keith Taylor that traces one young man’s journey from the corridors of Pennsylvania State University to the streets of New York City, and every restless stop in between.
Taylor sets the story in motion at Penn State’s Pattee Library, where a bright and ambitious undergraduate wrestles with a grade point average that has slipped below graduation requirements. His path to law school is stalling. His dream of playing competitive basketball is fading. And the person he imagined becoming is harder to picture with each passing semester. It is a familiar kind of young adult crisis, the gap between expectation and reality, and Taylor captures it with honesty and warmth.
Rather than dwell in disappointment, the story’s protagonist adapts. He shifts from student athlete to campus journalist, writing for the Daily Collegian. He channels intellectual curiosity into research that catches the attention of faculty with ties to the U.S. State Department. He finds his way into a hotel job, a circle of real friendships, and a growing sense of who he actually is, not who he was told to be. Taylor does not frame these shifts as failures. He frames them as choices, and that distinction drives every chapter.
The memoir travels beyond Penn State. Taylor moves to Los Angeles, then to New York City, where he lands a kitchen role at the legendary Lüchow’s on Fifth Avenue. He builds a life day by day, YMCA room, steam baths, basketball pick-up games, a brief and tender romance, and the steady pressure of making rent in one of the world’s most expensive cities. Life does not slow down for him to catch up, and Taylor does not ask for sympathy. He keeps moving.
What makes After Pattee stand out among coming-of-age memoirs is Taylor’s refusal to dramatize his life into something tidier than it was. The writing stays close to the ground, the smell of library coffee, the weight of a book bag on a humid morning walk, the nervousness before an advisor’s door. These are the textures of real life, and readers who have ever felt the pressure of living up to expectations, their own or someone else’s, will recognize them immediately.
Taylor draws on lived experience across geography, family dynamics, and the particular ambition of someone who has been told they are capable but hasn’t yet figured out what that means. His father, a presiding elder with a packed ministry calendar, looms in the background, encouraging, distant, certain about what success should look like. His mother and grandmother hold the warmth of home. The tension between those worlds gives the memoir its quiet emotional engine.
After Pattee (ISBN: 979-8-89075-954-2) is the first installment in a continuing series. The second volume is already in progress. Keith Taylor invites readers who have ever stood at a crossroads, wondering what comes after the plan, to pick up this book and find out what happened when he chose to keep going.
About the Author
Keith Taylor is a Penn State University alumnus who studied Political Science with a minor in Journalism and wrote for the Daily Collegian. His professional background spans research writing, restaurant work, and firsthand experience across multiple American cities. Pattee’s debut memoir.
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Website: booksbykeithtaylor.com