This novel reveals the counterculture as seen through the eyes of a group of coming-of-age, vulnerable, reckless, and often pretentious youths. In New York, Thelonious Horowitz is an up-and-coming musician who is uninspired and decides to trek to Chicago for the biggest musical festival of the summer. A diverse cast of characters, living in New York, Miami, and San Francisco, round out the novel, of which Thelonious is the connective tissue, ultimately bringing everyone together at the festival where paths converge for an event none will soon forget, and a concert a few will get to see.
The novel explores the spirit of youth through classical themes like love, wanderlust, freedom, betrayal, and family, all placed within a contemporary context, and in opposition to technology, fame, consumerism, the New Age, and to many, responsibility. This post-modern tragicomedy captures a moment in time in the spirit of Kerouac’s On the Road and Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
