Living Behind Time

by J. B. Hogan

Overview

"Most of us are living behind time: trapped in some phase of our past like an insect in amber." So says Frank Mason, protagonist of Living Behind Time, a pre-9/11 on the road story with a big twist. Evoking echoes of the 1950s Beats, Frank Mason, the protagonist, reverses the standard east-west American journey by going west to east. Leaving his home in San Diego, California, he makes a solo cross-country trip to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Along the way, he revisits friends and locations from the past. He encounters a cult in the California desert, acts as a decoy to get immigrants into Arizona, connects with old friends in Boulder, Colorado and Columbia, Missouri. There's a serio-comic meetup near Kansas City with a friend who's taken up cultivating cannabis. He then reengages with an old girlfriend in Memphis, but reluctantly goes on to the Gulf Coast and Pensacola where an older couple nearly adopts him to make up for the loss of their own son. After an eventful stop with friends near Raleigh, North Carolina, Frank's cross-country trek concludes in Myrtle Beach, where he tries to process the recent discoveries he has made about himself and the nation's recent past. In the end, as he prepares to retrace his steps yet again, he learns that no matter who we are individually or as a country, there is still hope in a shared future.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940186074687
Publisher:	Hat Creek
Publication date:	08/27/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

J.B. Hogan is a prolific and award-winning author. He grew up in Fayetteville, Arkansas, but moved to Southern California in 1961 before entering the U. S. Air Force in 1964. After the military, he went back to college, receiving a Ph.D. in English from Arizona State University in 1979. J.B. has published over 250 stories and poems. His novels, The Apostate, Tin Hollow, Time and Time Again: The Curious Case of Mr. Stephen White, Losing Cotton, and Mexican Skies-as well as his local baseball history book, Angels in the Ozarks, a short story collection entitled Fallen, and his book of poetry, The Rubicon-are available at Amazon, iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, and Walmart. When he's not writing or teaching, J.B. plays upright bass in East of Zion, a family band specializing in bluegrass-flavored Americana music, and is active in the Washington County (AR) Historical Society, where he's recently served as President.