Marcus and me

When Franklin Hubbard runs away from the Lutheran boys' home where he has lived for most of his eleven years, he hitches a ride from Marcus, a middle-aged man he quickly decides is both a 'loony' and a 'criminal'. But Franklin's definitions come from his influences - the state, the church, and the popular news media that have formed his comic book good-and-evil world view. What follows in that hippie heyday summer of 1967 is more than just a journey from coast to coast across America. For young Franklin it is a journey from an America he knows to one he has never imagined. Marcus and Me speaks with the blunt honesty of Franklin's own voice as he struggles to understand two opposing ways to live ... one based on the solid but simplistic values that have dominated his short life, the other offering him an exhilarating freedom that questions everything he has grown to believe. It's the summer of '67, yet every breath of Franklin's story has clear resonance with the America of today. It is about freedom and personal responsibility versus control ans unthinking acceptance.

[A quote from this very good book:] "And when I watch and listen, this is what I notice: when most people talk it's not them talking. It's the TV talking through them. Or it's their preacher talking through them. Or their mother. Or it's Mr Everybody. It's what they imagine they are supposed to think and feel and want. But it's not them."

source: About the book 'Marcus and Me' by Jay Edson; MindGlow Media New York; 2008