Article snippet: Sam Shepard’s elliptical new book, “The One Inside,” is labeled a work of fiction, though its hero — a writer and actor who lives in a place that sounds an awful lot like Santa Fe — bears more than a passing resemblance to the author. As his friend Patti Smith writes in a foreword, this character (“a loner who doesn’t want to be alone”) is, simultaneously, Shepard, “sort of him, not him at all.” Like so many of Shepard’s plays and short stories, this narrative explores the confusions of identity, the pull between freedom and roots, and the hard-to-erase dissonances of family life. More specifically, it echoes his galvanic 1985 play, “A Lie of the Mind,” pivoting around a man’s fiercely conflicted relationships with his father and a woman, and his efforts to mend — or, at least, come to terms with — a past that is both receding and looming over the future. In this case, there is his estranged wife of almost 30 years, with whom he had two children — the pair still amicably visit, from time to time, reminiscing about their daughter and son, and “how remarkable it was for two stubborn, crusty, old codgers like ourselves to have spawned such mild-mannered, calm kids.” But there are other women, too: a much younger one he calls the Blackmail Girl, who abruptly disappears from his life, likely because of his “inattention — lack of texting”; his father’s much younger girlfriend, Felicity, who seduced him when he was 13; and a long string of others whom he invariably aban... Link to the full article to read more