"It's like you have to travel Ruins Road first, through the abandonment, to come out correctly," a newfound friend tells Jon at Mesa Verde National Park. Jon and Suzy share the freedom of summer on Jon's motorcycle and sidecar following high school graduation. Their young love is filled with silliness and dreams of the future and starting college. But the futility of freshman year Basic Studies, requisites of little perceived value, and the rigors of Math class where pedantic professors proclaim, "Given: blah, blah, blah…solve for x" become too much for Jon. Directionless and despondent, he drops out of college and breaks up with Suzy. Is there a way other than the traditional track through college? Jon turns inward, with no self-esteem and no path forward. But when he embarks on a cross-country motorcycle journey, he begins to grasp perspectives wider than the western vistas and gain insight into what is truly "Given." A timeless story, perhaps more relevant today than when it was partially written many years ago. Honestly folks, the audiobook has taken the story to whole new level. The narrator, Luke Welland, has brought the story to life with distinctive voices that capture all of the emotion and struggles of first love, addiction, recovery, and personal growth. Philip Miller has composed, selected and arranged moving musical preludes for the book. The preludes surround the story and set the tone for two young lovers searching for a future in the tumultuous 1970s.
