National Network for Equitable Library Service

From critically acclaimed novelist Ray Robertson comes a rollicking Great Gatsby of the 60s - a sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll-suffused modern tragedy. For Bill Hansen, things couldn't be better. He's got a beautiful folk-singer girlfriend, a job at Toronto's coolest bookstore and, most of all, he's got Yorkville, which in 1966 is nothing short of paradise for a boy from the suburbs. And then Bill meets the charismatic Thomas Graham, who draws Bill into an obsessive quest to create what he calls 'Interstellar North American Music' and the Duckhead Secret Society is born and launched on a whirlwind tour of bars, taverns and dives across America. But in the haze of harder and harder drugs, it all starts to come undone. As Bill recounts the rise and fall of Thomas Graham and his musical vision, he simultaneously tells the story of frustrated idealism and the passing of an entire generation.