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Wild Blue Yonder: A Novel of the 1960s Paperback – September 14, 2011

by Jack B. Rochester (Author)
4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 29 ratings
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“Nathaniel Hawthorne Flowers, eh?” said First Sergeant Wilford H. Buford. “That yer real name or one you picked up out there in fairyland Cally-forny?” "Wild Blue Yonder" is the coming-of-age story of Nathaniel Hawthorne Flowers, a smart but sheltered boy from suburban Chicago whose beloved father suddenly dies, resulting in his flunking out of college. It's the 1960s, so he gets a draft notice but joins the Air Force to avoid going to Vietnam. Nate’s adventure takes off as he tries to understand the military mindset and the massive social disruption going on in America. His journey takes a Kafka-esque turn when he is sent to Germany to become a military newspaper correspondent whose stories will never see print. Existential, psychedelic, fun-filled and laced with the rock ‘n’ roll of the times, "Wild Blue Yonder" is the story of Nate finding his personal and spiritual values as he discovers the love of a girl and the meaning of family and friendships.
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  1. Print length
    296 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    September 14, 2011
  4. Dimensions
    6.14 x 0.69 x 9.21 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    1456588893
  6. ISBN-13
    978-1456588892
  7. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A 1960s portrait of the writer as a young man, brimming with romance, existentialism, military madness, social unrest, psychedelia, and great rock 'n' roll." - Publisher's Weekly, January 2, 2012, p. 32.

About the Author

Jack B. Rochester is author of "Wild Blue Yonder," his first published novel. He grew up in South Dakota and Wyoming, where, he says, everybody puts on their jeans one leg at a time. He has worked in publishing his entire career and has written 11 nonfiction books, including the popular "The Naked Computer." Rochester has a Master's degree in comparative literature from California State University at Sonoma, where he sponsors an annual scholarship for students who aspire to a career in writing. He shares his time between Lexington, Massachusetts, and La Casa de la Serenidad, his mountainside writing retreat at Squam Lakes, New Hampshire.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; First Edition (September 14, 2011)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 296 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1456588893
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1456588892
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.2 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.14 x 0.69 x 9.21 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 29 ratings

About the author

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Jack B. Rochester

Jack B. Rochester

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As a grad student, Jack B. Rochester longed to see a book with his name on the cover. Today, it’s on sixteen books and counting. He launched his career as a business book editor and guided 65 authors’ books into print. With the publication of the bestselling “The Naked Computer” he launched his own editorial services company, Joshua Tree Interactive. He went on to write three college textbooks and more business books until 2004 and the publication of his nonfiction swan song/last hurrah, the internationally acclaimed “Pirates of the Digital Millennium” (both TNC and PODM co-authored with John Gantz).

In 2007, he turned to writing fiction full-time: his Nathaniel Hawthorne Flowers literary trilogy was published by Wheatmark (paperback, Kindle, Audible). Two distinctly different novels and a short story collection are in the works. You can follow his writing and read his alternating blogs, Saturday Book Review and My Brain on Grape-Nuts, at JackBoston, his innovative website.

Jack spends a lot of his time mentoring writers. He counsels writers one-on-one and in writing workshops across the country.

He’s the co-founder of The Fictional Café, an online ‘zine publishing fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, fine art, photography, and fiction podcasts for nearly 1000 subscribers in 67 countries. “The Strong Stuff: The Best of Fictional Café, 2013-2017,” was published in a limited edition in 2019.

Jack earned a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature from California State University at Sonoma. He grew up in South Dakota and Wyoming, spent many years on the West Coast, and now lives in the Boston area with his wife. An avid cyclist, he owns five bicycles. As he likes to say, no moss grows beneath his feet.

Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5 stars
4.1 out of 5
29 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

RANDY CADE
5.0 out of 5 stars If you weren't there you can be
Reviewed in the United States on June 22, 2014
Verified Purchase
Before we even know his name we know he has seen Seurat’s “Sunday Afternoon at Le Grandes Jatte”, also one of my favorites, the only decoration in my office for years. Failed at college, failed at a manual job, protagonist Nathaniel…yes Nathaniel, is headed off for the air force on a cold Chicago morning in 1965.

His San Antonio destination might as well have been Dante’s Hell in Nathaniel’s mind; or so Nathaniel Flowers (yes, Flowers) is thinking. He totes his bag of books by Faulkner, Salinger, Hemingway, all from the library of his recently dead father who had the sensibility to give him half the name of the man he thought was the greatest man in American Literature; Nathaniel Hawthorne. The library he left behind still contained books by Henry James, Charles Dickens, Robert Roarke, John Steinbeck, even Mickey Spillane.

So who cares? The vast majority of people under 30 today probably don’t recognize any of these names unless they are preparing for their future with a degree in English Lit. As this course of action most probably signifies a future in poverty, a lot of college age people in the next few decades will probably steer clear of all of the above.

So why should you care about Wild Blue Yonder? Because it looks like a war book with jet fighter planes blasting their way through cold war exercises, climbing and maneuvering for the dog fight, explosions, G forces, action and high adventure?

No.

Everything is not as it seems. Wild Blue Yonder does not deal with jet combat, and does not deal with literature full time either. It deals with the character development and the changes within our Nathaniel Flowers during what has been one of the most turbulent, fluid, foundation-rocking periods in our history; the 1960’s+.

It includes the music, the drugs, the dancing, the be-ins, the joy, the disappointment, and the quick passionate loves of the time in between ideas discussed over coffee, wine and combustibles. Many of the great literary masters of that time make appearances much as apparitions following our characters, as do the Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Bob Dylan…ah hell, just trot out my entire dusty vinyl collection of the early rock gods. Most of them show up in Wild Blue Yonder.

Socrates and Thomas Pynchon rubbing shoulders with Jerry Garcia and Keith Richards? Something you don’t see every day. This rare combination of disparate truths in a novel is something you don’t often find in today’s age of cell phones, Kindles, mobile operating systems, Big Brother’s street corner video cams and…not novels, but what…? Oh yeah, BLOGS, TWEETS AND TEXTS. Those of you with the attention span of a hummingbird should avoid this book. No! What the hell am I sayin’? You (and you know who you are) need to read this more than anybody.

READ IT

So don’t say “So what?” to Wild Blue Yonder. It does as good a job of describing those critical times as any book I’ve ever read, and those times were an important contributor to what is now, for better or worse. After all, the stoned out, irresponsible, morally degenerate lunatics described herein are running things right now. I ought to know, I was there too, like the author. Wild Blue Yonder has the realistic feel of a trip back to the 60’s. I experienced the same music at some of the same concerts. I particularly envied the young service men on their night of groggy perfumed alcohol and hash fueled debauchery with the older European ladies.

So, no dogfights, just one hell of a well written novel. Realistic. (Did I say I was there?)

-Randy Cade
2 people found this helpful
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Phillip Jennings
3.0 out of 5 stars Nailed it? Hmmmm.
Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2011
Verified Purchase
The author, kindly, mentions my Viet Nam War novel in his description. I'm torn, but feel I need to review this finely written book. From my perspective, including infiltrating the 'hippie' crowd after I returned from SE Asia, he nails what I despised about the anti-war crowd--almost to the man/woman they were narcissistic, psuedo-intellectual pretenders (albeit ofter well-versed in philosophical claptrap that sounded "deep"). Their narcissism allowed no room for what was badly needed to at least be decent people--a sense of irony. In WBY the Air Force is the refuge from the Army (rarely would anyone be forced into the Marines!) sought by mostly hopheads and dopers (in this book). Why would you hate it? Thousands of kids their age were getting their asses blown off in Viet Nam and the guys in this book were in California and Europe, high most of the time they were off duty, and in absolutely no danger of any particular physical harm or worse. (BTW, a reality check--how many Air Force ATC guys were killed in combat in Viet Nam anyway?). Bad food? The horror. Cranky NCOs? Lord help me.
One particularly egregious episode was the retirement of the Colonel in Germany. After he gave a heartfelt speech, which I thought was moving, the protagonist of this novel (Nate) wondered whether to laugh or throw up. The Colonel, who loved his country and was proud of his service in the Air Force, was frail and walked funny. Perhaps due to being shot down over Nazi Germany when he was flying B-17s in heart-stopping missions during WW II when he was practically still a boy. And now the old geezer wants to talk about loyalty, service, patriotism, and other corny stuff. Surely a good guffaw is appropriate.
At this point, I truly began to dislike Nate and his pals. If this was the intent of the author, he indeed nailed it. And of course Nate was pretty clueless as to the cause of the Viet Nam War, the mission of the U.S., and the fact that if America wanted to rule Viet Nam it would have. Or certainly could have militarily.
It's easy to be anti-war. Takes no real courage to criticize the military. Particularly, and here again is the irony, when you are safely free from harm, starvation, punishment and most of the world's ailments because of the men in Viet Nam, and the men like that old Colonel who flew B-17s over Nazi Germany.
A very well written book. Rochester nailed it.
PEJ
2 people found this helpful
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X. J. Kennedy
4.0 out of 5 stars The Sixties Recaptured
Reviewed in the United States on December 12, 2012
Verified Purchase
Wild Blue Yonder: A Novel of the 1960s
Wild Blue Yonder, a story of being in the Air Force in wartime, mostly in Germany, far away from the Vietnam war, appealed to me personally (since I was in the Navy during the Korean war, and saw some of the world, but never went near Korea). Jack Rochester's novel is a convincing account of what it must have been like to be very young in the Sixties, feeling a bit lost and alienated from family, trying to stay sane in the arbitary and often absurd world of the military, while the controversial war was raging and the counterculture bloomed. (Some of the most engaging scenes are vivid accounts of the Haight-Ashbury, a be-in in Golden Gate Park with Timothy Leary, and a first encounter with LSD.)
This isn't a plotted novel, contrived to hold the reader on the edge of his chair; I never wondered, How will this all turn out? It reads like a rambling memoir or autobiography. Nevertheless, it held my attention by the sheer force of obvious truth-telling and the author's determination that we deeply understand his narrator, memorably named Nathaniel Hawthorne Flowers. (You'd expect the guy to have a strike against him, with a name like that!) This is a painstaking bildungsroman---a novel of a young man's growth into moral, psychological, and intellectual maturity. Flowers begins as hopeless and defeated, toying with the notion of suicide, but in the end has found himself, and a good loyal woman. I could have done with briefer accounts of barracks bull-sessions and fewer documents such as letters and the narrator's early writings, but all in all Wild Blue Yonder is a wonderful evocation of youth and time gone by, and it held me from start to finish.
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