Nathan Davett Cooper arrives in Europe on a German fishing boat instead of the Icelandic Charter flight on which he left New York three days earlier. He knows he should be dead... as are the other 40 Texan college students who went down with the plane into the English Channel. He makes it to Munich to stay with his best buddy, Charlie, who is up for the draft and fears being sent to Vietnam. Charlie is an aspiring gonzo-journalist, reporting on the new militant student revolutionaries organizing in Europe and around the world to violently resist America's War in Southeast Asia. Nate's fateful journey is a huge eye-opener for the untraveled and naive 19 year-old. He learns dark secrets about his family and has to ponder his responsibility for the plane's fatal fall into the cold waters off Normandy. He's buffeted by Charlie's struggles to decide if he's going to just report on the worldwide call to battle against "Nixon and his warmongers," or if he's actually going to heed the call and commit body and soul, and declare war on his native land: the United States. Adding to the tension between the best buddies, Nate falls deeply in love, or rather "lust," for Charlie's flower-child girlfriend Custer. Nate's torn by his friendship with Charlie, his guilt of having survived the flight that he somehow "knew" was doomed, his fidelity to God and country, and his awakening sexual desires for several different women who suddenly walk onto his life's stage. The passions of lust and war are strong currents which toss the characters about as they struggle both internally and interacting with each other to find a way to safety, happiness and love. Many people die in the process, and ghosts haunt them all along the way. LUST for sex, drugs, money & political power becomes entangled with murderous, criminal acts & the RAF's bloody war against the Vietnam WAR. Lust & War is an historical fiction about international militant revolution, politics and crime, set primarily in early 1970s West Germany. Dozens of the young bodies from Flight 54 are washing up on the coast of Normandy, entangled in hundreds of thousands of dollars in loose U.S. $100 bills. This all makes for an incredible journey. Nate, his family and friends, old and new, seek to solve the mystery surrounding the crash of ICE Flight 54, the cause of which is discovered to have its roots in the World War II secret OSS services of Nate's grandfather, Scotty Davett. Scotty strives to and mete out "swift Celtic justice" for those heinous crimes using his and Nate's innate Irish Fey abilities: mystic skills and gifts, such as reading tealeaves, dream walking through time and space and other intuitions, which add a metaphysical angle to the plot. A cast of other amazing, but somehow believable, fictional characters parade across the pages including: "Tarzan the Aryan", Jesus of Havana, Thor, Bjoerk, Ada, Queenie Davett, Inga, Katarina, Travis, Anne Daley, Officer Wagner, Lula May Davett (Scotty's cold hearted wife) along with the hilarious "Pferd," Nate's never to be forgotten imaginary horse back in Texas. Characters you'll both cheer and jeer, and hope to see again soon in coming sequels. Added to the author's created characters above are well-researched historical figures, such as the famous science fiction writers Philip K Dick and Robert A Heinlein, the "Custard Terrorist" Fritz Teufel, and those who gave their names to the Baader-Meinhof Gang, Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, as well as the real force behind the creation of the RAF movement, the unsung Gudrun Ensslin, AKA "Baader's girlfriend." Great characters, intriguing plots, subplots and surprising twists combine with funny, realistic dialog of the times and epoch, providing a peek into the much forgotten decade between the Summer of Love & Disco Dancing. All this adds up to a great story, and a fun and informative read of the times. Nate stands as a sort of "Everyman" for the 60s and 70s Baby Boom
About the Author: Michael D. Sanford was born in Dallas, Texas. He started writing this novel more than forty years ago while a university student in West Germany. He discovered the unfinished handwritten manuscript earlier this year and completed it for publication. Michael D. Sanford is a linguist, entrepreneur, technologist and inventor, who has studied, lived and worked in both Europe and Latin America. He currently resides in Fort Worth, Texas "Where the West begins!"