I Did Inhale

In this chronicle about life on the hippie trail, W. M. Raebeck provides a funky flashback to what now seems an easier era. Through her marginal feats and misadventures, you'll always be siding with the bad guy. Questionable conduct here takes a back seat to innocence, naivete, rites of passage, and even desperation. The author's exploits reveal, too, that perennial determination of the young-every generation's instinct to define itself and its time.

In a kaleidoscope of back roads, airplanes, boats, and trains, this is a sometimes funny, sometimes edgy story of a bold young woman finding her way through life and love. Packed with punchy dialogue, outlandish schemes, and eclectic love affairs, this could only be that one breathless moment of history-now fading into our past-that is great fun to revisit.

Boomers will grok these free-wheelin' recollections of long-haired days when hitch-hikers had to wait their turn for space on the on-ramp. And readers of every age will be reminded that the youthful spirit is timeless, and harrowing ordeals are just bends in the road.

Hippie freaks, where are you now?