Hippie From Iowa

A crazy little story, Hippie from Iowa sweeps the reader to a place never been, or one joyfully remembered. "Instead of college next year," my best friend said out of nowhere between classes, "let's hitchhike round Europe." Explaining to him it was preposterous, he followed my every objection with, "So?" Relentless, for a week, he countered my protests with that same one-word argument. While waiting for him to come to his senses, I did, finally understanding "So?" It changed my life. With prose ranging from manic hysteria to pastoral perfection, Hippie from Iowa preps me for the trip to Europe-explaining sex to my father; wrestling a girlfriend who can't take "no" for an answer; shocking nuns by wearing underwear on the outside of my pants-and leads me to European exploits from being taken home for lunch with an amorous French housewife (I was oblivious at the time) to getting picked up by a gay Marxist (hard to miss that one), and nights of sleeping under bushes, in German bunkers, or-alone on an eerie night-at Stonehenge. But it is not all hilarity and the bizarre, for during foot-treks upon the Scottish heath and climbing the Swiss Alps, I heard the whispering spirits of god, saw entire universes in stones at my feet, and met a young woman I would meet again thirty-six years later, from whom I would learn-at last-an answer to a riddle that brings awareness to this business of being human. Wildly irreverent and quietly profound, Hippie from Iowa becomes not just the saga of a trip to Europe, but the unique account of a man becoming a writer, all the while resolving issues right up to and including the Meaning of Life because-well-eventually somebody had to do it. Unpretentious, hysterically funny, and boldly honest, Hippie from Iowa invites the reader upon an intimate journey that is fun, heartwarming and, ultimately, a timelessly universal and insightful tale.