All Along Down That Road - 9781450275859

It is the mid-seventies in Detroit, Michigan, a time of change. Vietnam has finally ground to its melodramatic end and the 60's, exhausted and defeated, have fizzled out as well. The body politic still reels from Watergate and Nixon's subsequent resignation. Race relations are everywhere problematic, nowhere more so than in Detroit.

The city is also dealing with the auto industry being forced, for the first time, to comply with federal pollution and safety standards, an imposition many inside the industry, and out, view as high-handed and onerous. Area residents, Tim and Cassandra Hauser carry on anyway, aware of the upheaval about them but not of the turmoil they are about to foist upon themselves.

Their best friends, Jesse and Karin Whitmore, suggest a two-week vacation sailing around the Caribbean in a rented sailboat. To help defray costs, a third couple is also invited, other friends of Jesse and Karin's who Tim and Cassandra have never actually met. It proves to be the vacation of a lifetime, a bacchanalia of sun and sea and skin. Consequences necessarily ensue. When they return home all find their lives irrevocably altered.

This novel, then, is about transition and resolve, cause and effect. You are invited to come along for the ride. The road is sometimes bumpy and the sea occasionally choppy but the destination is nonetheless worthy, hopefully, of the obstacles encountered along the way. Bring along a good book to read.