Samuel Totten

Laguna Beach: The Kaleidoscopic 1960s - A Novel Samuel Totten

Laguna Beach: The Kaleidoscopic 1960s - A Novel is set in the gorgeous California beach town of Laguna Beach. It is paradisiacal, but it's not Paradise. After all, people are people.

The protagonist is a misunderstood but spirited young man with a great group of friends, all of whom revel in living in such a beautiful setting. With the beaches and ocean their palette, there is no end to the possibilities for adventure. Surrounding them, and with their own unique, fascinating, and troublesome stories, are the locals," an eclectic group of bohemians and artists, stalwart business owners and quirky employees and/or customers, surfers and beach bunnies, the lucky and unlucky, the haves and have nots, and the blessed and the distressed.

It is also the period of the Age of Aquarius, the freewheeling '60s, and the Vietnam War -- a period of radical change in social mores, dress, drug use, and sexual union, which does not leave the town untouched. As it is the advent of the Summer of Love and the rise of the "Woodstock Generation" and Laguna is laidback with a bohemian feel, the small beach town is flooded with outsiders (hippies, faux hippies, Hari Krishnas, Timothy Leary, and The Brotherhood of Eternal Love). They are part and parcel of the zeitgeist of the period. Indeed, in their own imitable way, they add a dollop of Alice in Wonderland, a pinch of Dr. Suess' And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, and a smidgen of Haight Ashbury to the quaint village streets.

As Kurt Vonnegut, the sardonic and satirical genius of a novelist, would put it, "All this happened, more or less." And "so it goes."