Lex Enrico Santí, a therapist for Cornell’s Counseling & Psychological Services, recently released his debut novel, The Song of the Midnight Rider. His journey as a writer began in childhood, inspiring him to study creative writing as an undergraduate and pursue an MFA in fiction. Although he decided to enter a career in social work, these roots never left. Now, 20 years after starting the first draft, he has published his novel, a deeply inspiring story about freedom, loyalty and the American road.
Growing up in Ithaca, Santí found a sense of independence and freedom through driving. In the early 1990s, he came across an urban legend about a mystery drug runner who sped down the midnight roads in a matte black car with tinted windows, nearly invisible. The Song of the Midnight Runner is Santí’s reimagination of this story, specifically the backstory and motivations of the driver.
Santí began writing the novel in the early 2000s while in graduate school. In an interview with The Sun, he talked about how his story changed since its inception: “I wanted to write even more backstory. The second chapter takes place when the Challenger explosion happened. … That chapter began with the driver’s youth, where he was very young when that happened, but I decided to continue that thread of his life story of what happened after those events and what led him to become a drug runner.”
In our interview, Santí spoke on what inspired him to become a writer: “I think I was a really lonely kid. … WWriting became my way of connecting to the world, and connecting to both my sadness and understanding my broken family.” Decades later as a licensed clinical social worker, he now uses writing as a way to reach readers who felt the same loneliness he did. “It became this powerful expression of being able to connect myself to a reader and give them something to show that I love them and they could understand who I was, and I could try to understand who they were,” he said. This sentiment absolutely shines through in his writing — there is something deeply personal about The Song of the Midnight Rider and the way in which every line feels like a conversation with the reader rather than one to be observed by the reader.
One of the greatest themes throughout The Song of the Midnight Rider is freedom (or lack thereof), inspired by Santí’s own history of feeling trapped. Despite having gone through his undergraduate and graduate studies with a relatively low amount of debt, his decision to attend Washington University in St. Louis for his Master’s in social work would ultimately drown him in over $500,000 of loans and interest. “Debt happens suddenly, and under the best of intentions,” he explained.
He would spend the next 11 years working in public service to pay these loans off. Santí dug into the mentality he entered, saying, “There’s no reason why WashU needed to charge me that amount of money to get a social work degree. Eventually, the path led me to be like, ‘I’ve got to work for places that are going to pay this off.’” Similarly, 17-year-old Jordan Samson, the protagonist in The Song of the Midnight Runner, finds himself bound to the Hungarian mafia as a drug runner in an attempt to alleviate the debt his stepfather brought upon his already-impoverished family.
Jordan’s struggle with freedom was also influenced by Santí’s upbringing in Ithaca: “I think there’s uniqueness to growing up in Ithaca and having a relationship with Cornell, even tangentially. You’re both an observer, fascinated with the place, and at the same time you’re trying to understand what your connection to it is. I write a lot about outsiderness and being disconnected or trying to find connection.”
Having come back to Cornell to work with students, Santí also sees this idea of connection within our students. He noted, “Students are oftentimes really passionately trying to form connections with one another, their major, their career and their life. … Cornell has formed me from the feeling of otherness. There’s this massive, beautiful campus that sometimes sits on top of a city which is spunky and fraught with real problems, compared to what Cornell is. This idea of understanding one another is something I’m trying to build a bridge to.”
To finish off the interview, Santí shared a message for readers and students at Cornell: “My book is fun, it is exciting and I hope anybody who reads it will enjoy it as an American road novel trying to navigate what it really means to be free. If anyone’s struggling with their sense of how to be free, I hope they reach out and get some help from the great people at CAPS.”
The Song of the Midnight Rider can be purchased via Santí’s website, Amazon or at Buffalo Street Books or Odyssey Bookstore in Ithaca.
Katherine Winton is a member of the Class of 2029 in the College of Arts and Sciences. She is a staff writer for the Arts & Culture department and can be reached at kwinton@cornellsun.com.
