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Guy Fontaine's time has passed. His wife is dead, and the small-town Oklahoma newspaper for which he covered sports has forced him into retirement. He sold his home and moved to northern California to live in his daughter's guest cottage. It's all over but the golf.
Then, in a heartbeat, Guy's life goes from boredom to nightmare. After he blacks out on the golf course and drives a golf cart down the San Bruno Freeway, the dream of independence through his golden years flies out the window. Guy finds himself an involuntary resident in assisted living at Mission Pescadero, which its administrator, Alexandra Truman, calls "the premier retirement community in Half Moon Bay."
Only this is 2022, and old-timers at Mission Pescadero are nothing like the old-timers in south-central Oklahoma. After surviving fifty years of corporate ladders, carpools, mortgages, and insurance annuities, these senior citizens yearn for a time when life was fun - 1967, the days of sex, drugs, peace, revolution, rock and roll, and more sex. So they transform Mission Pescadero into their own version of it. Even the dining hall is divided into where people were during the Summer of Love: Berkley, Old Haight, New Haight, Sausalito, New York. The drugs may be different and the sex driven by girls instead fo guys, but for residents, rock and roll goes on forever.
And what a bunch they are, There's Ray John, the cynical writer of letters to the editor, who will never again be in a situation without complaint; Winston, the drug-dealing, womanizing wheelchair mechanic; Sunshines #1 and #2, still fighting over who is the original; Henry, lonely and perpetually cold; and Phaedra, the self-proclaimed creator of feminism, who hates everyone young, straight, healthy, or happy, including her lifelong companion, Suchada.
Praise for Jimi Hendrix Turns Eighty
"Sandlin can see that there is a kind of gruesome comedy in what happens to us, but the humor is never mean, and he loves his people too much not to understand that their grief and frustration and nostalgia are real."
Nick Hornby author of High Fidelity and Juliet, Naked
"As tight and funny as anyone doing this comedy-novel thing."
Christopher Moore author of Lamb and Fool
"Sandlin never loses his sense of empathy, investing his aging boomer misfits with dignity despite the farcical senior-citizens-on-acid (literally) plot."
The Washington Post
Genre: General Fiction
Then, in a heartbeat, Guy's life goes from boredom to nightmare. After he blacks out on the golf course and drives a golf cart down the San Bruno Freeway, the dream of independence through his golden years flies out the window. Guy finds himself an involuntary resident in assisted living at Mission Pescadero, which its administrator, Alexandra Truman, calls "the premier retirement community in Half Moon Bay."
Only this is 2022, and old-timers at Mission Pescadero are nothing like the old-timers in south-central Oklahoma. After surviving fifty years of corporate ladders, carpools, mortgages, and insurance annuities, these senior citizens yearn for a time when life was fun - 1967, the days of sex, drugs, peace, revolution, rock and roll, and more sex. So they transform Mission Pescadero into their own version of it. Even the dining hall is divided into where people were during the Summer of Love: Berkley, Old Haight, New Haight, Sausalito, New York. The drugs may be different and the sex driven by girls instead fo guys, but for residents, rock and roll goes on forever.
And what a bunch they are, There's Ray John, the cynical writer of letters to the editor, who will never again be in a situation without complaint; Winston, the drug-dealing, womanizing wheelchair mechanic; Sunshines #1 and #2, still fighting over who is the original; Henry, lonely and perpetually cold; and Phaedra, the self-proclaimed creator of feminism, who hates everyone young, straight, healthy, or happy, including her lifelong companion, Suchada.
Praise for Jimi Hendrix Turns Eighty
"Sandlin can see that there is a kind of gruesome comedy in what happens to us, but the humor is never mean, and he loves his people too much not to understand that their grief and frustration and nostalgia are real."
Nick Hornby author of High Fidelity and Juliet, Naked
"As tight and funny as anyone doing this comedy-novel thing."
Christopher Moore author of Lamb and Fool
"Sandlin never loses his sense of empathy, investing his aging boomer misfits with dignity despite the farcical senior-citizens-on-acid (literally) plot."
The Washington Post
Genre: General Fiction
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Used availability for Tim Sandlin's Jimi Hendrix Turns Eighty