Peter Levine

Saturn's Return: a Boomer's Memoir Peter Levine

Saturn's Return: A Boomer's Memoir chronicles an upper middle-class son/itinerant musician's emotional, social and historical travelogue during America's heady decades of the 60's and 70's. Beginning shortly after postwar America reaches its economic and political zenith, when the America way of life can still be characterized as a middle-class patriarchy, the author recounts his struggle to pursue his aspirations against the vision of his father- a WWII Naval Reserve Captain-bent on shoehorning him into the military. After graduating high school in 1966 he heads off to Boston University, having enlisted in the Naval Reserve in a flawed compromise. The popular opposition to the war among the young is increasing and spreading throughout the country, drawing him and so many of his generation further away from the moorings of a middle-class life. Over the course of the next decade he pursues the life of an itinerant singer and guitarist until the fading of the counterculture directs him towards consolidating a more permanent identity and coming to terms with his family of origin.