Parallel Lives A 60's Love Story

PARALLEL LIVES A 60’s Love Story

Set during a time marked by social upheaval and dissent, foreshadowing our current civil protests for justice, PARALLEL LIVES A 60’s Love Story is a tale of class, the power of communication, and the redemptive fire of love. Experience the 1960s San Francisco Bay Area first-hand through the eyes of a mute girl born into wealth and a loudmouthed Native American boy who are haunted by the other and the lessons they each must learn to be united. From Maja Hawthorne and Billy Wayman Wolfe’s first seemingly random meeting to the years beyond, this bicultural 20th century novel demonstrates what happens when we reach past conventional expectations toward cataclysmic change.

Maja and Billy

PARALLEL LIVES A 60’s Love Story portrays the personal awakening of Maja and Billy as their lives irresistibly intersect, form an unbreakable bond, and then split apart over and over again at pivotal historic moments in the 1960s as the country was splitting apart—a roadside accident, a Santana benefit concert for farmworkers at the Fillmore Auditorium with Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez breaking his hunger strike with Robert Kennedy in Delano, the autoworkers nationwide strike, and the Native American take-over of Alcatraz. As the 60’s wind to an end, and with each of them carrying private wounds, Maja and Billy must find the mysterious other and solve who they are to each other.

Maja Hawthorne and Billy Wayman Wolfe come from opposite worlds but when their eyes meet they know one another in a profound and certain way. Each of them, separately and in parallel, fight against social expectations, their private longings, and ultimately who they are for who they will become. Their circumstances pull them together. Their flaws spin them apart.

Maja begins invisible, misinformed and silent. Billy starts out using words of power to threaten, bully and lead others. Throughout the story these two characters are forced to confront their relationship to the spoken word as they endure emotional and physical pain.

20th Century Bicultural Historical Romance

The story of Maja and Billy is a 20th century bicultural coming of age romance novel during an unprecedented time marked by the assassinations of three political lions, an unpopular war, and civil unrest with strikes, protests, and marches demanding equality and justice for Native Americans, Blacks, women, farmworkers, and autoworkers.

Spanning 15 years across the ever-changing face of San Francisco when the great divide of economics and culture no longer kept people separated, no matter how different, PARALLEL LIVES A 60’s Love Story demonstrates that our chances for love and happiness are never truly over or used up. Success hangs on readiness and timing.

As Billy learns compassion and Maja finds the courage to speak up, their paths cross many times. During these brief encounters, they touch, they kiss, and they break each other’s hearts as the currents of their lives pull them apart, again and again.

Coming of age during the relative calm of the 50’s, Maja and Billy’s lives join together during the turbulent 60’s as they each attempt to survive the edgy challenges of the great transition toward change. Now, as adults, before they can set out on their own, first they each must find and confront the mysterious other.

Would You?

What if each of us is promised one wild and precious someone for a lifetime?
What if to seize this true love
first both parties must undergo an arduous and dangerous journey separately?

(NOTE: If this story sounds vaguely familiar to you, PARALLEL LIVES A 60’s Love Story is a completely re-envisioned, revised, rewritten, re-edited version of Parallel Lives ((A Novel)) I independently published 4 years ago.)