About a decade ago, Shawn Montaigne’s doctor told him that if he did not quit his profession, he would likely die of a heart attack.  With no savings to speak of and scant connections, Montaigne took his doctor’s advice quit his stressful job of twenty years—and decided to write a novel set in his community of Imperial Beach.

Thus began a harrowing journey of poverty, courage and redemption in the city of San Diego.

What’s it like to realize that one has no choice but to strike out on one’s own?  These days millions of people across America are starting to realize what a staggering feat it can be simply to survive, to put a roof over their heads and food on their tables.  The recession has hit San Diego particularly hard.  How do I know this?  Not because I’ve read statistics—because like Montaigne, I’ve lived it.  I’ve watched house after house go into foreclosure, and even fresh out of college I was unable to find work here.  But whereas for most of us the economic crash hit several years ago, for Montaigne it started the day he realized he needed to become self employed, or risk a heart attack.

After quitting his job as a teacher, Montaigne realized he still wanted to reach out and share his love of learning with others, so he became a tutor, working with students from all around San Diego.  Unfortunately tutoring scarcely paid the bills, and oftentimes didn’t pay for food.  Montaigne went days without food as he fought to run a business in a city that even before 2007 was short on jobs—a city which in many ways had already forgotten how to care for its most impoverished community members.

What inspired Montaigne to rise above the odds and choose life each day, even when he couldn’t afford to eat so many of those days?

Imperial Beach, CA is a residential beach city which is situated between San Diego proper and the Tijuana Estuary.  It is the southwestern-most city in America—and with 26,324 people living there as of 2010, it’s earned its city status.  “City” is a bit of a misleading word though for what is essentially a small beach community—one which in many ways isn’t particularly viable from a commercial standpoint.  Despite the renewal efforts of the last decade, there aren’t a lot of attractions to draw visitors to Imperial Beach or drive commerce.  Even the U.S. Open Sand Castle competition rarely draws the crowds it used to.  Anyone who has driven up or down Palm Avenue knows that Imperial Beach is a fairly depressed city, and that much of it is falling into the hands of gangsters and drug addicts.

The most recognizable landmark in Imperial Beach is the Imperial Beach Pier, a 1500 foot wooden structure which extends into the Pacific Ocean from the Portwood Pier Plaza.  The pier was nearly demolished in 1983 by a storm and was subsequently rebuilt.  While boats do not dock at the pier, it is used by its residents primarily for fishing.  To most it is only that—a fishing pier.  But when Shawn Montaigne looked at it he saw something else—an entire world beyond it, and an extraordinary story of friendship, adversity, redemption and love. 

Montaigne spent the next eight years of his life writing his fantasy novel Melody and the Pier to Forever, inspired by the Imperial Beach Pier.  During this time he wrote on buses and trolleys as he went to and from his tutoring work, which all too often was less than he needed to survive.  To that end he hit the pavement for hours a day, posting flyers.  “The landlord threatened to evict me so often that the 3-day notices were at one point thicker than the novel’s fledgling manuscript,” Montaigne said—a scenario all too familiar to many people who have lost their jobs in the recession.  Montaigne’s resulting panic attacks sent him to the emergency room twice, and an injury to his shoulder nearly put his arm permanently out of commission.  With no health insurance he was forced to find his own means to heal his shoulder—and his soul.  Not long after his own misadventure began, the recession struck San Diego and the number of open jobs in the city dropped even further, along with the budgets of his tutoring clients.  By 2010, Montaigne’s clientele had dried up completely.

And yet Montaigne still managed, against incredible odds, not only to survive but to achieve his goal of completing and publishing Melody and the Pier to Forever  on Barnes and Noble and other sites.  During that time much of his of his inspiration was drawn from the characters on his pages—but with his achievement he is now able to inspire others.

Imperial Beach and San Diego as a whole have been hit much harder by the recession than many cities in America.  As such many people now realize that they, like Montaigne, have no hope of a profession—for financial reasons if not for reasons of health. 

Many of us think of heroes as people who choose to be heroic—not those who had no real choice—no choice but to strike out on their own or die.  With the recession though more and more people are realizing that true heroism often arises when the only choice is life or death.  That’s not a choice which can be taken for granted—it can be a brutally challenging one when quality of life is poor.  It’s a choice that has to be made every day in the face of true adversity.  Rising to meet that choice is heroic, because even something so devastatingly simple can be devastating.

Not only does Montaigne’s story serve as an example to others of how they can triumph in the face of financial hardship, but it also demonstrates nobility.  When this city turned its back on Montaigne, he still staked everything on his novel, all out of love for an obscure landmark in Imperial Beach and the wonder it inspired in him.  By writing and publishing a powerful novel inspired by that landmark, his work will eventually serve to unearth it from the shadow of obscurity—not only shining a spotlight on Imperial Beach, but perhaps also inspiring a community to take a closer look at its own strengths and shortcomings.  This in itself may lead to greater commercial viability and inject some new vitality back into an old city—and perhaps others will find some opportunity for renewal in that vitality and emerge from their own struggles and create their own dreams, as Shawn Montaigne did.