Counterculture Dreams:
A 1960s Story
Book 3 Conciliar Series
Released January 2024
The cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s (1965-1975) brought in one of the greatest cultural shifts the world has known. Music, dress, moral ideas, social manners, political attitudes were turned on their head. The war generation hardly knew what motivated the post-war generation. Across Western Society a social fissure opened.
Counterculture Dreams follows the lives of a group of young people in Sydney who navigate the changes, some grasping the changes, others resisting and even condemning them, and still others making disastrous choices. The story centers on Danny Williamson and his younger sister, Angela.
Danny ends school, innocent of the traps in society that others, including Angela, see. He forms a relationship with clever Cathy Dunn who clings to her Catholic traditions. He begins university in 1963 with Cathy, though at different universities. Meeting counterculture leader, Ronnie Newell, whose audacity impresses him, disturbs his relationship with Cathy. Unaware of the influences around Ronnie and his crowd he gradually drifts away from Cathy. He does not see where he is heading, despite Angela’s warnings.
All the while Angela plays a mysterious game with Danny’s best friend, Max. But is it a game? Nobody is sure until Prime Minister Robert Menzies announces a national service scheme to meet the threat of communism taking over Southeast Asia, beginning with Vietnam. Danny and Max are eligible for the call-up.
Gerda van den Donker, introduced in TIMES OF DISTRESS and with a bigger role in IN THIS VALE OF TEARS reappears, as does Jannie de Kam.
SIXTIES SERIES
The Conciliar series will consist of six connected but stand-alone stories. The themes of the ‘Goddess’, neo-paganism, and Gnosticism are threads through the stories. The historical, political, and ideological background is the cultural revolution the 1960s and 1970s (1965-1975) and the Second Vatican Council. The author who lived through those times recreates its atmosphere.
Book 1 Times of Distress
Book 2 In this Vale of Tears
Book 3 Counterculture Dreams
Book 4 Dream to Nightmare, (2025)
Book 5 The Castle of Heavenly Bliss, (rev. 2022)
Book 6 (untitled) due 2025.
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