Rather than recounting history from a distance, America by Mike Bond approaches a turbulent era through lived experience. Youth, ambition, and uncertainty move alongside cultural revolution and political unrest as personal journeys reflect a country in transition.
In a decade marked by unrest and reinvention, four young people search for direction as the world around them shifts at breakneck speed. Troy, orphaned early, finds comfort in family and dreams of flight and space exploration. Tara claims independence and identity through music, growing into a rock ’n’ roll performer shaped by freedom and rebellion. Mick, a football standout with a defiant edge, begins questioning authority as the war abroad becomes impossible to ignore. Daisy, driven by ideals of equality and service, joins the Peace Corps and devotes herself to understanding the human mind. Their lives intersect amid protests, cultural shifts, and personal awakenings, revealing how private choices are shaped by national turmoil. Through moments of joy, loss, and reckoning, America captures both the exhilaration and the cost of a time that redefined lives—and a nation.
Mike Bond is the author of nearly a dozen bestselling novels and an ecologist, war and human rights journalist, award-winning poet, and international energy expert. His work spans more than thirty countries across seven continents, often drawn from firsthand experiences in remote, dangerous, and war-torn regions. His novels are praised worldwide for their intricate plots, vivid settings, and explosive pacing. His reporting has covered wars, revolutions, terrorism, and major environmental crises. Learn more at his website.
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Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57580047-america
PLEASE ENJOY THIS EXCERPT OF AMERICA
FREEDOM
THE BOY STARED through the cyclone fence at the dirt road, golden meadow and forested hills beyond. He listened a moment more to the din of other boys playing in the concrete yard behind him, scrambled up the cyclone fence ripping his shirt on the barbed wire top and dashed across the meadow uphill into the cool shadowed forest.
Minutes later he glanced down from the hilltop at the hostile brick walls and barred windows of the orphanage. A black Ford police car with white doors had stopped at the gate, its yellow roof globe flashing. Two priests and a cop were walking along the road, one priest gesturing at the forest.
He imagined them catching him, hitting him, wished he’d never run away, turned uphill through the dark trees then down a wooded valley to a stream. He knelt in the wet moss, his reflection rising toward him – dirty and skinny, tan hair askew – and drank the icy water tasting of rock and mud. So this is what it’s like to drink from a stream.
He followed the valley for a long time till he saw a dirt road ahead through the trees. A big red car was there. Afraid he’d been seen, he pulled back into the trees. From the car’s open windows came voices, a man and woman. If he moved back up the hill they’d surely see him. He’d be taken back to the Boys’ Home, the Fathers would whup him.
A warm breeze stirred the leaves. His heart hammered, his knees shook with fear and fatigue. Soon the car would leave and he could cross the road.
The woman was moaning. Holding his breath he listened. The man must be hurting her. She cried out; the boy glanced round but there was no one who could help.
Shivering with fear, he worried what to do. If the man killed her and he had done nothing to help, it was a terrible sin. But if he tried to help her he’d get sent back to the Boys’ Home. Standing, he tried to see better. The man was pushing the woman down in the back seat, maybe strangling her.
The boy dashed across the road and banged on the car. “You leave her alone Mister!” he yelled, voice shaking, “I’ll call the cops!”
They were naked from the waist down. “Get him out of here!” the woman screamed. The man threw open the back door shouting, “You little shit!” and slapped the boy hard across the head. The boy tumbled into the ditch and scrambled through brambles uphill. The man wasn’t following but the boy kept running, gasping for wind, legs weak with fear that the man would circle somehow and get him. He ran till he could run no more, stumbled, fell, and ran again.
After a while he stopped and bent over panting, watching behind him. He couldn’t stop shivering but wasn’t cold. He tried to talk to himself and his voice trembled. His head spun, his ears whined. If the man wasn’t killing her what was he doing? Why had she said get him out of here? Why were they naked like that?
Confused and terribly lonely, the boy moved on through the forest, jumping in terror at the crash of an animal running away, a flash of tawny fur. Even the Boys’ Home was better than this.
In late afternoon he came to a big place of empty, run-down tarpaper-covered buildings, some of their windows broken, tall grass spiking up from their concrete yards. He felt hungry and afraid, then angry at himself for feeling it. He snuck along one building and looked in a window hoping for something to eat, but there were only empty concrete floors, yellowed newspapers, rusty cans, torn tarpaper, and a broken toilet lying on its side. He slipped through a half-open door and stepped silently from room to room around broken bottles, boards with nails sticking up and chunks of fallen ceiling.
A window shattered overhead and he ducked into a closet, broken glass in his hair, deafened by his pounding heart, hoping whoever it was hadn’t seen him.
Maybe it was a bird hit that window. Stupid bird.
He tiptoed from the closet toward the door. Another window crashed. He ran stumbling over cans and bottles. Someone was shooting at him. At the door he halted, fearing what to do. Blood ran down his cheek onto his shirt. They were going to kill him.
Steps scuffed outside in the concrete courtyard. A kid. The kid picked up a rock and slung it. Glass shattered and the rock hopped across the floor inside.
NOW ENJOY THIS GUEST POST FROM AUTHOR MIKE BOND
Why We Are Here
Many years ago I woke from a dream of being in a large place like a supermarket full of people. I met a young man with long dark hair who looked like me. “Why are we here?” I asked him.
“To find out what it is.”
“What what is?”
“Life.”
I awakened understanding that this was the task we are all given in life. That in good years and bad, joys and sorrows, our unerring goal is to understand life, to seek the meaning of this vast mystery encompassing us. To find out what life is and spread the word, like scouts returning to the tribe from distant and dangerous lands.
We are in an infinite universe of endless infinities. They stretch in all dimensions far beyond our feeble cognition. Time is forever, and forever unknowable. Even deep inside ourselves we cannot begin to understand.
We are children of the void. We go through many joys and sorrows in life, many magical mysteries we cannot comprehend. Perhaps what we experience feeds a greater wisdom far beyond our ken; we cannot know.
Like many people, I have lived through great joys and dangers – atrocious wars and vicious perils, and deep, long-lasting love, that have all made me believe in God. And to live deeply, intensely, to love, have children and give them the magical mystery of life – this is what we are born for.
Nothing else matters.
