Expecting to Fly: A Sixties Reckoning

DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT IT FELT LIKE TO BE FIFTEEN? MARTHA TOD DUDMAN DOES.. It starts with a blue hash pipe in a shabby field and a hot tight dance at the Mayflower Hotel and rapidly accelerates against the kaleidoscopic backdrop of the Sixties.. Describing a time weirdly similar to today Expecting to Fly recalls a conservative government embroiled in an increasingly unpopular war racial tensions and a generation of disillusioned young people looking for something meaningful to believe in -- teenagers who like Dudman hurled themselves into a sea of drugs and sex they werent really ready for.. With the same passion and brutal honesty that she brought to her first book Augusta Gone -- the story of her daughters troubled adolescence -- Dudman re-creates her own wild ride through the turbulent Sixties vividly recounting scenes you probably experienced yourself.. From the prim tradition of a posh girls school and debutante parties of Washington D.C. to the snows of New Hampshire and the campaign for Eugene McCarthy from living out of a knapsack in Spain to getting stoned on acid in Yellow Springs Ohio Expecting to Fly takes us on a blistering trip to a time when the only thing you couldnt be was shocked.. Now years later Dudman reflects on that time and what it means: Which was it -- triumph exploration some important journey or just a big stupid mistake a total waste of time?. You decide.