No Fortunate Son

Patrick Golden is a student at Berkeley during the turbulent and vibrant late 1960s. The product of working-class Jewish and Irish-Catholic parents, he takes a huge step out of his social comfort zone when he makes the move to the storied walls of the Ivy League. Soon he’s surrounded by old-moneyed aristocrats as he joins his affluent and socially well-connected college roommate, Charles Comstock, at Harvard in the summer of 1968. At Harvard, Patrick meets Morgan Thackeray, a stunningly beautiful and free-spirited coed from one of Boston’s oldest, wealthiest, and stodgiest families. Despite her bigoted father’s virulent objections and threats, their romance blooms—until it is torn apart by the dark secret Morgan must keep from Patrick. To protect him, she disappears, leaving his heart in tatters without an explanation or even a good-bye. Forty-one years later, Patrick finds himself back in Boston on sad business—the funeral of his old college roommate, Charles. In a twist he could never have predicted, he reconnects with his long-lost love. After decades of doubt and confusion, he’s about to learn her secret—and his life will be dramatically altered by her confession. Vividly describing Harvard, Berkeley, and San Francisco as they were in the late 1960s, No Fortunate Son recreates the sights, sounds, mood, and culture that defined this colorfully tumultuous and politically pivotal era. Barbara Keer, Editor of Chicago Splash Magazine, Splash Magazines Worldwide It isn’t often that I find a book I can’t put down and feel a loss when I finish because the characters have become my friends. No Fortunate Son is that kind of book.I found the book interesting in several ways: as a first novel, as an example both of a self published book and re-careering. Patrick Golden, the protaganist, has a very different story. “Glancing by chance at the obituary section which until then had been concealed from view, he gasped when a photograph of his friend, Charles Comstock, leaped at him from the page.” Patrick lives near San Francisco and Charles died in Boston. And so begins a tale that is filled with intrigue as it weaves it’s way through the period of the Viet Nam War, one shocking event following the next and the young people trying to find their lives in the midst of it all. The stories of that time come vividly to life.Thank you.