Product Description
Odyssey:1970 is the story of a young man's life on the road during one of the pivotal years in modern American history. The sequel to Crossroads: 1969, it picks up with the story of John Cassell, a twenty-two year old college graduate, just returned from Europe and North Africa. Miraculously freed from the Vietnam War by a high draft lottery number in December of 1969, he decides to devote the year 1970 to exploring his own country? to enjoy being young? to revel in the life of the Counterculture before the War Machine comes for him in 1971. The long, uncertain hitchhike between Albuquerque, New Mexico and Berkeley, California becomes as familiar as the way to work. The freaks, gunrunners, revolutionaries and fugitives who haunt its many miles become family. His year of exploration is shortly transformed into a deadly game of cat and mouse with a rogue Albuquerque cop, Robert Dugan, a man maimed in mind, body and spirit by his Vietnam War service. Based in part upon a true story.
From the Inside Flap
Odyssey's greatest strength is neither its captivating storyline nor superb development of the sometimes odd, but very human characters. It draws its magnetism from the author's incisive eye and impeccable sense of the history, and political forces of the time.
This well-crafted tale resonates with a clarity and perspective of arguably the most colorful, and perhaps the most significant time in our country's recent past.
Odyssey's characters are driven to their ultimate actions by forces both globally external and painfully internal. They are neither pawns of history, nor creatures of free will, but an artful combination of both.
I found the book maddeningly impossible to put down, and chock full of knowing smiles at its accurate references to long-forgotten details of the time of hippies & rednecks, Anglos and Chicanos, and doves and hawks. Bravo, Mr. Cassell, on a five star first novel. - a reader
