Book: Here Comes The Sun - The Summer of 69, Russell LaValle

It is the spring of 1969 and Dalton Hawkes—a newly minted college graduate with a degree in literature and minors in sex, drugs, drinking, and rock ‘n’ roll—awaits the summer.He and his friends have endured all the upheavals of the Sixties and simply want to pull back from the world and look upon it anew.Moving into a notorious “hippie house,” they begin journeys of discovery—for Hawkes, a star-crossed love affair with Maxine Cooke, an exotic older woman who has irretrievably captured his heart. From nighttime skinny-dipping parties to planting a hidden marijuana crop to carousing in local bars to watching men walk on the moon—Hawkes and his fellow “travelers” revel in everything the 60’s ethos has to offer. The summer climaxes with the Woodstock Festival and its clarion call of peace, love, and song to the world. After three days of music and psychedelic celebration, the Festival’s cleansing rains have spoken, and in the end, sitting out a last rainstorm in an abandoned truck, listening to Jimi Hendrix's haunting rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner, Hawkes and Maxine make their separate peace and await whatever the future holds—for them and their generation.