Revolution by Mike Bond
In his previous novels, America and Freedom, Mike Bond brought us four ambitious young people who, on vastly different paths, are navigating their way through the country’s turbulent years of sturm und drang.
It’s the 1960s, and each of them has responded to the tumult and politics with passion and commitment. Mick, horrified by a war he considers senseless and wrong, throws himself into anti-war protests while his high school flame, Daisy, joins the Peace Corps. Mick’s sister Tara answers her own personal unrest by joining a band, her husky voice commanding the adoration of the crowds who come to hear her, but nevertheless falling prey to addiction. Troy, adopted brother of Mick and Tara, trying to outrun the memories of foster homes and orphanages, volunteers to fight in the war Mick despises.
Although the third and most recent book, Revolution, starts in the fetid jungle of Viet Nam, with Troy engulfed in the heat and blasphemy of battle, it is Mick who dominates the narrative for the rest of the book. Hunted by the FBI for fomenting riot and protest, he must stay on the move, most often alone, furtive and penniless — missing his sister, Troy, and of course Daisy.
But he’s wily and shrewd, and he manages to somehow get himself across the country, ending up in Bolinas, a tiny unincorporated community in Marin County on the California coast. Under an assumed name, he is befriended by the local literati, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Richard Brautigan, and their circle of beat poets and writers, musician Joan Baez and her husband activist David Harris; but every new acquaintance heightens Mick’s fear of being recognized. It’s impossible to hide, even when embroiled in the unrest in Paris or Mexico City.
FICTION WITH FINE HISTORICAL DETAIL
The ‘60s trundle forward: the student deaths at Kent State, the Kennedy assassinations, the Standard oil tanker spill, the horror at the village of MyLai, and the dogged efforts of the SDS and the Weathermen — all tearing at the idealism of an entire generation. There’s LSD, peyote, mushrooms and jugs of Gallo hearty burgundy to help take the edge off, and there’s smack to make things worse.
Mike Bond brings years of international journalistic experience to his work as a novelist. He’s been an environmental activist and human rights correspondent. He covered dictatorships in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa; acted as energy correspondent in Paris for The Financial Times. This gives credence to his stories and the characters in them. It’s fiction with fine historical detail.
As in previous novels, Bond intersperses song lyrics and poetry within the text, giving the book a sort of melody but also anchoring it in a vivid period of time. Revolution is the third in a series, but it is highly readable on its own. Readers may, however, decide to read America and Freedom to bond even closer with the four young people — and absolutely be anxious for book number four.
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About Mike Bond:
Mike Bond is the author of nine critically acclaimed bestselling novels, an award-winning poet, ecologist, and journalist. He has covered wars, revolutions, terrorism, military dictatorships and death squads in the Middle East, Latin America, Asia and Africa, and environmental crises worldwide. His novels depict the innate hunger of the human heart for good, the intense joys of love, the terror and fury of battle, the sinister deceptions of governments and corporations and the vanishing beauty of the natural world. They take the reader into intense experiences in the world’s most perilous places, making “readers sweat with [their] relentless pace.” (Kirkus), “working that fatalistic margin where life and death are one and the existential reality leaves one caring only to survive.” (Sunday Oregonian)
