Description:
Things in the sleepy fishing town of Cold Storage, Alaska, are changing. It's the summer of 1968; the men are wearing their hair long, the Vietnam War is at its height, and multiple assassinations have gripped the country. But some things remain the same. Ellie's bar is still the place to catch up on the town gossip, and there's a lot to talk about, from the boys who have returned from the war (and the ones who haven't), to the robberies that are plaguing the locals, to the new guy in town: a famous monk from Kentucky.
Ellie, herself a fugitive of sorts, is curious about this "Brother Louis" and worries about his motives, but he seems harmless enough. However, when a handful of other outsiders arrive to town and start poking around the bar and asking questions, she begins to have reservations. Have they followed this mysterious monk, rumored to be the famous author Thomas Merton, to Cold Storage? And what is it that they want, particularly the inept FBI agent with the strange name: Boston Corbett?
Inspired by assassination conspiracy theories, the life of Thomas Merton, and the changing tide of the '60s, Blown by the Same Wind is a coming-of-age story for the town of Cold Storage itself.
Brief description:
John Straley was born in 1953, the youngest of five children. He received a BA in English and a certificate of completion in horseshoeing. He enjoys jokes and a wide variety of literature and music. He is the Shamus Award-winning author of The Curious Eat Themselves and The Woman Who Married a Bear and was appointed the Writer Laureate of Alaska in 2006. Straley lives with his wife, Jan, a prominent whale biologist, in a bright green house on the beach in Sitka, Alaska, where he works as a criminal defense investigator by day and sleeps, writes, and plays with his band, the Big Fat Babies, whenever he can.