Hippie Picaresque - On the Road Meets the Summer of Love by John Melville Bishop

Hippie Picaresque moves through the Summer of Love, the magic moment in 1967 when everything seemed possible. San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury is heating up the popular imagination, but Norm’ small time drug deals make it too hot for him, and so he takes to the road, leaving his true love behind. He hitches through a real America “just out of reach” to Portland that is decades away from establishing itself as a cool place. His college friend Nick offers shelter and a menu of alternative life styles that can’t compete with the lost highway, and Norm finds himself back on the Interstate, thumb extended toward Seattle. Only to be picked up by two young women headed home to Vancouver in a little sports car pulling a camping trailer. Even with vintage clothes, basement bands, and Kitsalano Beach, Norm discovers that Canada and America are not the same place. The open road calls and he makes his way back across the border to a Seattle crash pad, troubled love, abundant LSD, and a moveable feast of friends.