Ken Kuhlken – författare

In the weeks before the 1979 Mexican elections, San Diego PI Alvaro Hickey is checking the stories that Baja California campesinos are spreading about visits from the Holy Virgin, one who has definite political preferences. Though Alvaro doubts that this visitor is divine, he’s firmly on her side. Then, Lourdes Shuler asks him to unite her with her sister, Lupe, whom she claims is the campesinos’ Virgin. Alvaro is not the kind to turn down an appeal for help, especially from such a beauty, even though she may be hiding something. But he doesn’t know about the infamous comandante of the Mexican federal police who has come from the Capital to rid the land of this vagabond Virgin.

In 1926, musician Tom Hickey reads in a broadside about a lynching that the Los Angeles newspapers failed to report and discovers that the Negro victim was an old friend. When his neighbor, an LAPD detective, confirms that, officially, the lynching didn’t occur, Hickey decides to investigate the murder. The investigation earns Tom beatings, gunfire meant to dissuade him, and warnings from a Klansman that he’s made some formidable enemies. Among them may be infamous Police Chief Two Gun Davis, Examiner publisher and political heavyweight William Randolph Hearst, and Harry Chandler, owner of the Times, who owns more land than any man in the world.

It''s late summer 1972 in the redwood forests of northern California. It seems a safe and wondrous place, but some of the population of the town of Evergreen is growing pot in the trees, and others are bent on stealing it. Then there''s the coming folk festival, a jamboree bringing in musicians, music fans, war protesters, hippies, the Cossacks and other biker gangs, and the law, both local and federal. Skirting the edges are shades of the Manson family and the Mexican Mafia.

Clifford Hickey is scheduled to perform at the festival in what might be his last guitar gig before heading off to law school to please his father. He arrives at the peaceful woodland campsite of his brother Alvaro, but within moments six armed men in badges crash the camp, and Alvaro runs. Clifford is arrested and roughly handcuffed. One of the sheriffs'' nephews has been murdered, and Alvaro is the posse''s quarry.

When Clifford''s father and mother arrive on the scene, it''s the beginning of a confrontation between the Hickey family and the locals, including the Cossacks, who seemingly have their own agenda for Alvaro.

Clifford, on the brink of adult life, becomes embroiled not only in a murder case but also in what becomes a battle between the Hickeys and the law and, ultimately, the Hickeys and their own past.