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lRockbridge
County writer Peter Farnham has published his first novel, “West Heads Home,” available on Kindle, and as a paperback from Amazon.com.
“West Heads Home” tells the story of Arthur “Preach” West, a young man who returns from a tour in Vietnam in the fall of 1969 to a country he scarcely recognizes. Suffering from PTSD and survivor’s guilt due to a horrific ambush, he finds himself in San Francisco, where he is mugged and left near penniless. Over the next month, he makes his way across the country to his birthplace, Belfast, Maine.
Along the way he meets a variety of people, including Amanda, the sex-obsessed flower child; Chevrolet Ford, the affable hobo with a gambling problem; Marie, the small town divorcee; Freddie and his family of broken women and children, searching for Shangri-La; Blue Hawk, the monstrous cult leader with a terrifying vision and a plan to carry it out; and The Coolest Guy Ever.
Interspersed with the road trip are flashbacks to Arthur’s early years in Maine with childhood friends Hag Hall and Clement Paul (who end up on very different paths); Dick Osgood, the older friend born for trouble; Arthur’s beloved Aunt Esther; Riley Laverdiere, the grocery store manager unable to resist temptation; the bully Oscar Loudermilk (later a bully with a badge); and the first love of Arthur’s life, Sharon.
“West Heads Home” is a coming of age story, a returning soldier’s story, and a road novel. It is also a story about America in the tumultuous 1960s, when the country changed in so many ways (for good and bad) from what it had been before.
Farnham is himself a Vietnam veteran who then “labored in the trenches of mid-level science policy making in Washington, D.C., for 35 years.
He now lives in Glasgow with his wife and two beagles and has been a county resident since 2011. He is active in community affairs, and has just finished a term on the Hull’s Drive-In board of directors.
He said he is available to discuss “West Heads Home” at book clubs, local organization meetings, and anywhere people who love books gather. He can be contacted at [email protected] or (540) 464-1397 or (703) 901-2841.
