A 1960s Story
The Sixties Series Book 3
THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION of the 1960s (1960-1975) brought in one of the greatest cultural shifts the world has known. Music, dress, moral ideas, social manners, and political attitudes were turned upside down. The war generation hardly knew what motivated the post-war generation. Across Western Society, a social fissure opened.
Counterculture Dreams follows the lives of a group of young people in Sydney who navigate the changes: some grasp them, others resist and even condemn them, and still others make disastrous choices. The story centres on Danny Williamson and his younger sister, Angela.
Danny ends school, innocent of the traps in society that others, including Angela, see. He forms a relationship with clever Cathy Dunn who clings to her Catholic traditions. He begins university in 1963 with Cathy, though at different universities. Meeting outlandish counterculture leader, Ronnie Newell, whose audacity impresses him, disturbs his relationship with Cathy. In denial about the influences around Ronnie and his crowd, he gradually drifts away from her. He does not see where he is heading, nor the fire he’s dealing with, despite Angela’s and Cathy’s warnings about Laila Fairburn, one of Ronnie’s girlfriends.
All the while, Angela plays a mysterious game with Danny’s best friend, Max Gallagher. But is it a game? Nobody is sure until Prime Minister Robert Menzies announces a national service scheme to meet the threat of communism taking over Southeast Asia, beginning with Vietnam. Danny and Max are eligible for the call-up.
Gerda van den Donker, introduced in TIMES OF DISTRESS (Book 1) and with a bigger role in IN THIS VALE OF TEARS (Book 2), reappears. Jannie de Kam, also introduced in IN THIS VALE OF TEARS, reappears in close company with Gerda van den Donker.
As with each title in the Sixties Series, a major theme is the transition from the innocence of traditional life in the 1950s to the mayhem of the 1960s cultural revolution and how each character deals with the moral and political upheaval.
There are subplots in the story that originate in the previous titles in the series.
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