After a traumatic childhood in rural Missouri, Ned Pentecost becomes a young minister with a wife and a safe future. But his life is upended in 1969 when he is exposed to free love and illegal drugs and heeds the call of the counterculture.
Ned is soon entangled in drug deals, steamy affairs, untimely deaths, and painful betrayals, a web that takes him from communes to seedy motels, from Bogotá to Paris, and from classrooms to jail cells. Women loom large throughout the journey-good women, bad women, dangerous women.
Anchored in the tumultuous decades of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, the coming-of-age novel explores themes of violence, betrayal, and redemption, while Ned undergoes numerous transformations in his search for love and purpose. In the end, Ned's story, like a good blues song, ultimately strikes a chord of hope.
About the Author: After writing a cowboy story in the fifth grade, Ozzie Cheek knew he would be a writer. But his life first took many detours. Among other things, he studied for the Methodist clergy, taught school, lived in a commune, owned businesses, and traveled the world.
His first publications were stories in literary magazines. His first writing income came from selling erotic letters to a men's magazine under a female pen name.
In 1995 Ozzie moved to Los Angeles and went on to write screenplays or TV series episodes for HBO, Showtime, NBC, CBS, and Fox. He wrote and produced the TV movie Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, and he is the author of the suspense-thriller Claws and the coauthor of the nonfiction narrative Why Planes Crash. White Boy Blues is his second novel.
For more information, please visit OzzieCheekWriter.com.
