Remember Tony Rizzo, whom Jane and Nate met after the Grateful Dead concert? Well, Tony has decided it’s time for Nate to meet Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, and that his rather unique digs in a Napa County vineyard are just the place to partake of Owsley’s Finest.

Ever wonder what it was like to hang out in the Haight for a kid back in the 1960s? Nate and his roommate Lee find out big-time in this chapter as they unknowingly wander into the Summer of Love. Jane takes Nate on a hike up Mt. Tamalpais, then he takes her for a ride, then she takes him for a trip. And where are those whales anyway? Meanwhile, Nate gets a big dose of Military Madness.

A wacko who runs a pizza joint and greets customers with “Goddammit!” A roommate who drives an arrest-me-red Austin Healy 3000 sports car. A lovely young Irish alcoholic poetess. Haight Ashbury. And Jane. Ah, yes, Jane. What else awaits Nate in California?

In which our unlikely hero braves Hurricane Betsy and lives to write about it. Not only that, but survives military punishment for doing so. And what happens when Dinky, Hubba-Hubba, JD and his barracks mates celebrate aboard the riverboat? Celebrate what? And what about that 1958 Plymouth Golden Fury he left behind?

To Fall In or Fall Out? That is the question, the philosophical question Nate Flowers must grapple with in Chapter 2. Whether it is better to just fall in and follow orders, try to be just one of the troops, or to relive bittersweet memories of civilian life. As he grows accustomed to barracks life, Nate finds an unexpected kind of camaraderie founded on the protest music of Bob Dylan and Barry McGuire.

It’s 1965 and Nathaniel Hawthorne Flowers, family in disarray, flunked out of college, has enlisted in the U.S. Air Force to avoid being drafted into the Army. As he stands in the cold outside the Chicago Loop Greyhound Bus Terminal, he’s in doubt about that decision: Why does the destination sign on the bus say, “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here”? Why is his mother so eager to get him into the service? Does he have any clue what kind of wild blue yonder he’s about to fly into?