Quixotics / John Wayne Falbey (ePub)

The Quixotics is a tale of coming of age in the baby Boomer generation. The time is 1970, and three young men have returned from military service in Vietnam. Like other returning warriors of that era, they've become disenchanted with a country that no longer feels comfortable or welcoming to them. Restless and troubled by what they see as a loss of individuality in an increasingly one-size-fits-all society, they decide to escape it and find an environment more to their liking.

They pool what little cash they have and buy a barely seaworthy sailboat. Their plan is to sail leisurely though the Caribbean, living life on their own terms one idyllic day at a time, determined to find adventure and right the wrongs they find along the way. Combative with society and each other and lacking sailing and navigational skills, they set off in the small, cramped boat.

To earn some badly needed cash, they grudgingly agree to deliver a cargo of weapons to anti-Castro insurgents in Cuba. The start is rough and the voyage rougher, but all hell breaks loose once they reach the island. Captured by Castro forces, they're imprisoned in an ancient Spanish dungeon. Eventually, they escape and join the rebels in the Sierra Maestro Mountains. Here, their talents for guerrilla warfare, honed in the jungles of Vietnam, assert themselves.

Before this tale of adventure, romance, and self-discovery is over, each man will come to realize, as Cervantes said, "Our greatest foes, and whom we must chiefly combat, are within."