I occasionally get offers of books to review, and usually I’m smart enough to turn them down. I’m sure I miss some good reads, but my experience has been disappointing for the most part when I accept a free book. I violated my self imposed rule recently, and accepted a copy of Where The Wind Blew by Bob Sommer and for a change I wasn’t disappointed. The book is about a sixties Vietnam war protestor, Peter Howell, think a Bill Ayers type, who is involved in the bombing of a defense contractor’s building and the unintentional death of several employees of the company as well as several of his comrades.

Peter Howell, now Peter St. John escapes the carnage and is on the run. He eventually establishes a life, a wife, a family, all in the dark as to his past. His political instincts awakened by some fundamentalist lunacy cause him to run for the school board, a mistake that soon sends him on the run again.

The story paints a vivid picture of the history of the time. I was 18 when the Vietnam War started, and the author does a wonderful job of creating a sense of time and place that brought back my memories of those days. It captured the frustration, the anger, and the helplessness that we all eventually felt about the débâcle that was Vietnam.

The book is a fast paced then and now examination of our country and its culture. I had a hard time putting it down.

I'll take all requests for the book left in the comments during the next 24 hours, or so, and then use a random number generator to determine the winner. I'll then ship the book at my expense to the winner. The offer is limited to residents of the U.S. and Canada. My apologies to my good friends in other countries but the cost of shipments to other destinations is simply too high.

note: I normally take very good care of my books, but must confess that this one mysteriously acquired a slight coffee stain on the fore edge.

And the winner is, Kaleena