Böcker av Howard A Brown

Sixteen year old Sam Turner is dating his first steady girlfriend, Angela Williams. Angela is everything he imagined his first girl would be. She's pretty, smart and fun to hang out with. There's just one problem, she's a Christian. A Bible quoting, attend Church all the time Christian. In Sam's mind, Angela's Christian values are a barrier keeping them from moving to the next level in their relationship.Then Sam meets Tanya. Tanya's pretty, smart and fun to hang out with-minus the Christian values. Sam likes Tanya but he likes Angela too. He even enjoys the conversations he and Angela have about the Bible.Sam thought he had to make a choice between Tanya and Angela until his best friend Daryl suggested he date both of them. After all, schools out for the summer, they live in different neighborhoods and have different lifestyles.Sam thought, why not, maybe just for the summer, after all, what harm could possibly come from it?

1970 ushered out a decade of events that some thought would tear America apart. An unpopular war in Viet Nam followed her into the new decade like the shadow of a bad omen. Riots in every major city in the North and violent peace rallies in the South divided America along racial lines. The assassination of three men many considered the greatest leaders America had ever produced, a young President, his chosen predecessor and a King of peace raised the question if America's best days were behind her. This is the world John Carter would enter in six months when he graduated from high school. Over the past four years John watched the changing of America with anger as the images were displayed daily on his family's television and played out live in his recently integrated high school. He spent the past two years working after school and weekends to help his mother hold the family together while his father served a two year sentence in a federal prison. Now it was time for his dad to come home and John would be released from the responsibilities that befall the man of the house. Average grades and no athletic accomplishments meant college was all but out of the question. Work in one of the flourishing factories in Dayton until the Army drafted him was the most likely scenario. Then his escape was provided when he overheard a conversation between two friends. He would join the Navy. He would hold the Navy to its recruiting poster promise. "Join the Navy and See the World" A world he thought would be void of violence, hatred, and racism and full of fun and adventure. What he didn't expect was more responsibility and greater challenges then he had ever had or faced. The lessons he would learn during his 3 month "Maiden Cruise" would come in far away places and from the most unlikely people. These life lessons would cause him to reconsider his ideas about race, people and the country he had learned to hate.