My Summer on Haight Street

It’s 1967, the Summer of Love. With the war in Vietnam raging and the draft hanging over their heads, three Milwaukee high school graduates set off on very different paths to seek their own destinies and discover that people, places, and things are neither what they expected, nor what they appear to be. Bob Ralston journeys to San Francisco—the epicenter of the hippie movement. John Haus enlists in the army and ends up in Vietnam. Jim Gaston beats the draft and seeks an alternative lifestyle. Each must live with their choices and survive in one of America’s most tumultuous times. Those who experienced the 1960s will relive them as the author’s words capture the awakening of millions of America’s youth to a world of free love, drugs, and rock and roll like it’s never been played before or since. Readers too young or too old to have lived through the Summer of Love will experience Haight-Ashbury through the eyes of someone who was there. My Summer on Haight Street is a remarkably insightful chronicle of three Baby Boomers in the turbulent 1960s that defined a generation and a nation. This fast-paced novel is based on several real people and some real events. Robert Rice, Jr., has crafted a compelling story that captures the aspirations and fears of young men who elected not to go to college immediately out of high school in 1966 and 1967 and faced the prospect of being drafted and sent to Vietnam.