Beat

<p class=ql-align-center><strong style=color: rgba(152 0 0 1)>It's 1976 and the counterculture has taken a dark turn in San Francisco. </strong></p><p class=ql-align-center><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Former '60s revolutionary Billy Johnson now a 27-year-old aspiring writer and small-time drug dealer sells T-shirts at a Haight-Ashbury shop by day while reading Camus and Kerouac behind the counter. By night he sells cocaine and Quaaludes at bars cafes and clubs around town. He still</span> drives a psychedelic-painted VW bus and wears his hair long reflecting the ideals of his past as he faces an uncertain future.</p><p class=ql-align-justify><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify>Billy and his best friend Manny - a quick-witted rock journalist - hang out in North Beach coffee houses hit the nightlife pursue women and otherwise compete in an escalating match of one-upmanship. Along the way they interact with a colorful parade of sexually liberated artists musicians scene makers and hangers-on led by a vivid cast of female characters: Ti brash young and in over her head; Lannie a secretive self-destructive beauty; Constantina a sharp-tongued intellectual who holds more than a few secrets of her own; and Delaney who earns big-time cash acting out sexual fantasies and fetishes for middle-aged men at a high-priced S&M club. </p><p class=ql-align-justify><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify>Sex drugs and medicated kicks turn to sober reality when Billy's roommate commits suicide leaving behind a cache of journals filled with disturbing revelations. Then Lannie overdoses on drugs. Under suspicion because of his relationship with Lannie Billy faces police interrogation and the scrutiny of his own conscience forcing him to question the life he's leading and where he's headed. Set against the aftermath of the 1960s the once-vibrant hippie dream a fading memory <em>Beat</em> is a provocative and sometimes disturbing novel that explores lost idealism compromise and moral crisis through the prism of its anti-hero's journey.</p><p class=ql-align-justify><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify>Set against the aftermath of the 1960s the once-vibrant hippie dream a fading memory <em>Beat</em> is a provocative and sometimes disturbing novel that explores lost idealism compromise and moral crisis through the prism of its anti-hero's journey.</p><p> </p>