A Thousand Stones
The Age of Revolution, Lust & War
During the late 60's and early 70's, turbulence dominated both the world stage and the personal psyche of youth worldwide. It was an era of startling contrasts.
Make peace, not war. Flower power. Turn on, tune in, drop out. Passion for ear-splitting, loud music. Vegetarian heroin users. Open the mind, close the establishment.
A young man sporting long hair and full beard, sitting in a pastoral field of flowers, smoking pot and burning his draft card... a stubble-headed soldier not yet old enough to vote or even buy a beer, slogging through disease-infested Southeast Asian marshes... a young woman dancing blissfully naked to the beat at Woodstock, later lying in a pool of her own blood, wearing a crimson splattered yellow sundress, gunned down on her way to class in O-HI-O.
Who could make sense of it all? College students, of course!
A Thousand Stones is an historical fiction about both peaceful and militant students in the age of the Vietnam War, young love, criminal sabotage, and, of course, sex, drugs and rock and roll. It is also an entertaining coming-of-age story about a 19-year old Texan, Nathan Davett Cooper; Nate.
Europe was a magnet for the young and restless; Nate is both. He is presumed dead, along with 40 other Texas college students, in the crash of ICE Flight 54. Bodies wash ashore on the Normandy coast, amidst large clumps of grey-green paper wads: hundreds of thousands of dollars in US currency.
Infused with unusual travel adventures, seasoned with the songs of the times and the longings of early manhood, the story follows this young American, his revolutionary-minded gonzo-journalist best friend, Charlie, Custer, a worldly-wise hippie girlfriend of Charlie's, and others involved in the unfolding mystery of twin plane crashes, mystical Irish lore, a budding worldwide radical underground movement, and their surprising connections across time and space.
A Thousand Stones is a nostalgic look at what was happening between the Summer of Love, the Days of Rage and Disco Dancing. It's both innovative and entertaining; blending little-known history, memorable fictional and historical characters, and an enrolling story into an amazing read that will stay with you long after the last page is turned.
Michael D. Sanford was born in Dallas, Texas, and has studied, lived and worked extensively in both Europe and Latin America.
