Showing results by author "Jack B. Rochester" in All Categories

Bridge Across the Ocean, set in 2011-12, is the story of four New England entrepreneurs in their mid-30s who founded Smithworks, a high-end custom bicycle maker, a decade earlier. Jedediah Smith, Shieh-Seng "Luke" Lin, David Bondsman and Rick Saundersson have invented the most innovative bicycle drive in history, the Spinner, a technologically advanced device that produces and stores its own energy without batteries.

Tim, an SDS member, avowed communist and anarchist, has had a transformation on the bombed-out streets of New York and is now a full-fledged member of Weatherman. Bent on bombing America to its senses, he wants Nate at his side. Nate, although anti-war and intellectually sympathetic, is unwilling to participate in Tim’s anarchy - until, that is, Tim blackmails him. Their lives become an antagonistic pas de deux as the stakes rise: They try to remain collegial while despising each other's lifestyle.

The year is 1969. After an interminable four years under the boot of the US military, 24-year-old Nathaniel Hawthorne Flowers is ready for his real life to begin. But when Nate is denied admission to UC Santa Cruz, he decides that a bachelor's degree isn't necessarily the path he's laid out for himself. When a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity presents itself, even Nate is tempted by the allure of conventionally defined success. Madrone inspires us to consider how far we'll go to remain true to ourselves.

Madrone, the second volume in the Nathaniel Hawthorne Flowers trilogy, follows Wild Blue Yonder: A Novel of the 1960s. It’s 1969 and Nate is out of the Air Force and back in California, in the arms of Jane Chandler, the girl he left behind. Pretty, high-spirited, and totally in love with Nate, Jane takes him back to college with her, the University of California at Santa Cruz, one of the hippest campuses in the country. At first, Nate follows what seems like a set path: college, becoming a good citizen. But it doesn’t take long before he sees the system for what it is. And he doesn’t ...

Wild Blue Yonder is the coming-of-age story of Nathaniel Hawthorne Flowers, a smart but sheltered boy from suburban Chicago whose beloved father suddenly dies, resulting in his flunking out of college. Nate receives a draft notice from the Army but after some “encouragement” from his mother, decides to enlist in the Air Force instead. It is 1965. Nate is 20 years old. Airman Flowers goes not to Vietnam but Germany, straight into a military Catch-22. His assignment: writing stories as a reporter for the Stars and Stripes newspaper which will never see print. Nate's adventure deepens as he ...