Riversitting / Riversitting (ePub)

On a Wednesday in Oregon in September, 1874, a ghost is born in the lighthouse at Yaquina Bay.
On a Saturday in June of 1967, on the sidewalk outside the Salt Lake City Greyhound Station, three local girls ponder how to get to the Summer of Love in San Francisco to explore the World Family Revolution, when they don't seem to even have enough cash between them to cover one-way bus fare.
A handsome, weeping young man rolls up to the curb in front of them in a 1962 Rambler. He has a great little car, a terrific cord sports coat, and no money at all. Within minutes, all four are on the road west.
The same day, two best buds from Springfield, Missouri sneak out of town in a Renault Dauphine, its up-front trunk packed with stolen hamburger, buns, and tinfoil.
What Larry and David want is out of Springfield, like, out forever, and San Francisco sounds like a great place to get some honeys and score some moneys. Hey, at least for a start.
A day later, two guys from Medford leave home in a VW van they've spent months fixing up, headed south from Oregon to California, to discover where the suckage stops and the coolness starts.
They seek a society based on free concerts, swaying, sun-dappled breasts, and no high school football. And their Holy Grail is to find a place somewhere to plant their flag that is entirely and totally suck-free.
The previous Thursday, Durr had bailed on Fort Smith for one last blaze-of-glory road trip before giving into the inevitable, which was to beat Selective Service to the punch and volunteer to sign up with the Army or the Air Force or some damn thing. Supposed to get you preference for your specialty, they said. Yeah, right.
Waiting for him out on the road are two little girls with dirty feet, standing on a street corner in Reno, hoping for a ride somewhere cool and hoping to not get creeped on by creeps.
On another street corner in Gilroy, the most beautiful girl in the world stands serenely and confidently, hitching politely. Dressed all in spotless white, Beanblossom awaits the ride that will certainly be along soon, ready to be intrigued and entertained by whatever adventure lies ahead.
And further down the road are the best-looking, most worthless guy in the world, and Spider, who just wants a ride across the Bay....
Fourteen kids jammed into three vans, after leaving three dead cars behind them on the road, all converge on the Embarcadero, wanting to find peace, love, understanding, possibly drugs, and great shopping.
One more runaway is on course to join them.
On Coast One, Marcus flees south in blind terror. Along the twisting cliff road, he fights to control the monstrous Pontiac 2+2 he stole from his kidnappers, two crew-cut, collegiate-looking thugs who burned his house and captured his parents in Newport, in Oregon, six hundred miles up the coast.
Marcus wants only to become invisible, and stay that way.
Behind him are his kidnappers, who pursue him without mercy. Ahead is the Summer of Love, the Fall of Saigon, the end of the draft, his crazy Kansas grandmother, the Sexual Revolution, Elizabeth Ann Klein, Rebecca Liechtenstein, Margaret Joan Connolly-Donnelly, the 55-mile-an-hour national speed limit, and the maniacal Dave Scott, used-rug king and psychopath.
And above and over all is the ghost of Zina Tremblay.
And underlying all are the two lost headstones lying in the failed orchard across Nester Creek in the northwestern corner of the Blau family farm, Grandma's one thousand journals, and the contents of Grandma's black japanned recipe box.