Barbara Linick
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1970’s college graduate Zinnia Frisch takes off on a free-spirited adventure through Europe and lands at the magical Spanish island of Ibiza. There, she discovers the exotic sexy cast of international characters who have made this place their home. With $500 and a backpack of belongings, she moves in with the in-crowd.
So begins Zinnia’s eventful journey as she cuts loose for unknown, forbidden places across four continents - and meets her own Prince Charming, Berend van Bos of the Netherlands.
Berend, a millionaire entrepreneur, brings Zinnia into his jet-set life and into the midst of a huge hashish deal replete with Moroccan farmers, clandestine investors, dangerous cover-ups, and Interpol.
Zinnia is a baby boomer who chose an alternative lifestyle, one that takes us on an almost unbelievable series of misadventures and surprises that couldn’t happen in today’s world. It’s candid and refreshing, a splendid sun-drenched read with just the right touch of noir underpinning! You will find yourself in Zinnia and her adventures in those carefree early baby boomer days.
Review by: Todd Mercer for ForeWord Magazine
FOUR STARS
’Where have you been darling?’
’Well Ma,’ I replied, ’I’ve been in prison in Morocco.’
She looked at me. ’You must be hungry.’“
Zinnia Frisch, an expatriate American, and her secretive Dutch husband Beri are preparing a huge transatlantic shipment of hashish from their beach resort in Tangier. They anxiously scan the waves for the running lights of a craft aptly named Wanderlust, half-expecting police to jump from the shadows. Such elongated moments of combined dread and anticipation make exciting lives and dramatic, self-searching fiction.
The story backs up five years to 1970 to show how far the daughter of a cryptographer has come from her New York roots. Though she protests against the Vietnam War in college, and speaks vaguely against consumerism, specific ideologies aren’t a lasting priority. Zinnia’s peers seek out rat-race cubbyholes, but she would rather find out what European adventures will do for a case of naive malaise. An extended vacation begins by visiting relatives and acquaintances in Austria, Switzerland, and Genoa. The Mediterranean island of Ibiza fits perfectly enough to become a new home. Some readers may be temporarily restless between the downshift into the backstory and fully realized milieu of the Ibizan expatriates.
On the island Zinnia befriends artsy, uninhibited, beautiful people and becomes a regular at full moon parties. Everyone in her orbit shares part of themselves socially but holds back information. She is aware that an indecisive nature allows her persona to be reshaped by environment. The motives of those nearby are quite questionable. All-night dance clubs host smugglers who prowl for transit mules. Zinnia earns wisdom enough to uncover the mechanism of the carefree subculture: “There was an implicit mystery, an implicit illusion among us…about freedom or obligations. We were colluding in the visionary art of make believe.”
Prince of Tides novelist Pat Conroy notes that “...boomers have redefined every age they’ve moved through...” They pretty much owned the Seventies; their cultural touchstones dominate this book. Linick thoroughly tacks morally ambiguous sexual and criminal lifestyles to an exceptional time and place. Emblematic signposts of the boomer generation are spread thick here, from Transcendental Meditation to the Rolling Stones, from Fellini films to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. In moments of doubt, Zinnia tends to blame external factors. She’s so sympathetically drawn that it feels natural to agree.
Baby Boomer Blues is both earthy and cosmopolitan. It appeals to a generation who put a premium on the quest for identity, people who believe in the authenticity of firsthand experience. Recommended to the widest population cohort, and anyone else who has been struck in their youth by the urge to see what’s going on over the next hill.
We stared through matching Abercrombie & Fitch 40-power binoculars, both of us crouched against the waist-high cinder-block wall that separated our patio from the Atlantic beach. We didn't want anyone to see us—anyone who might be looking and suddenly catch us staring out to sea. It was suspect. I looked off to my right; the red sun was on the edge of the slate-blue sea. Brr! Rubbing my goose-flesh arms, I lit a cigarette. When did that chill creep into the air?
Soon, soon we'd spot our sailboat, Wanderlust. We had already made contact with her captain, Bill, the night before. The walkie-talkies were working out just fine, even with the nonstop activity of Gibraltar's heavily trafficked straits. Wanderlust had crossed them safely, and had slumbered in the sea lane all day. But now, under cover of approaching darkness, Wanderlust was making her move towards us, towards Tangier.
"Aye, and a fine wooden sloop she is," I thought, in an appropriately British accent, as I found myself chiming that little ditty, "Sailing, sailing, o'er the bounding main!"
My husband was very nervous—not like him at all. Usually pillar-like and swaggerish, he was aristocratic in times of passion and panic both. People were afraid of him. So handsome and all that money! I worshipped him.
Binoculars hanging around his neck, he stood up and went inside our bungalow. I heard the tinkle of the ice and the splash of the booze as he poured himself his rum and coke. It was a tall one. I pressed my binoculars to my face, searching for Wanderlust on the steely sea. A small squadron of tuna boats bobbed aimlessly, anchored as they were for days at a time out there.
"Sailing, sailing …”
I heard the doorknob turn.
"I'm going out. Be back," he said, and, drink in hand, he swung open the door.
There, framed by the stark white walls of the hallway, stood Leilah, in skin-tight jeans and fringed chamois shirt. Her tiny white Maltese was struggling wildly in her arms, burying its moist black nose in her ample and visible cleavage.
"Hi, guys!" she said brightly. "What's up?" She quickly took in the pause, then added, "Hey, what's with the lenses? Am I interrupting something kinky?"
"No, just spying on the neighbors, Leilah," said my husband, tossing the lenses on the sofa.
He looked right at her dog, which had succeeded in burrowing its way into her bra, and he grinned widely.
"Got any kinky ideas? You're always welcome around here, gorgeous! But I was just going out. Stay and keep Zinnia company."
He reached over to touch the dog, but the pooch gave a deep growl, bit him hard on the finger, and then barked agitatedly. My husband jerked his hand away. A pinpoint of red blood swelled from a nail bed.
"Nice little hondje," he said, sticking his finger in his mouth and sucking the blood. "Why don't you go get run over by a camel? See you later, Leilah!"
I watched him as he went down the single flight of steps, until his Dutch pageboy haircut disappeared from view, leaving only the lush bougainvillea waving softly in the frame of the doorway. He was "just going out?" At a time like this? And what the hell was Leilah doing here?
"She should have been a bloodhound," I thought. "What a nose for human hubbub." I tried to be discreet as I slipped the rubberized Zeiss lenses under a Moroccan cushion that lay atop the outdoor chaise. Now they rested safely beside the walkie-talkie.
"Hi, Leilah," I said. "Is that Fatima or King Tut?"
Leilah laughed, gently scratching the noisy little creature with her long painted nails.
"This is Fatima, aren't you, my ancient queen! That's it, old girl. Poor Fatima, she just hates men! Tranquilla, guapa! Okay, now be a good baby and go give Aunt Zinnia a big kiss!"
She put Fatima down, and the little silky bundle pranced over to me out on the terrace, its nails clickity-clacking on the tiled floor.
"Hi, little one," I said, scooping her up in my arms. "What are you and your mommy doing at La Playa Arabie at this time of day? Straying from the ranch?"
"We're out looking for trouble, what else?" sighed Leilah, promptly tossing her leather purse on the couch and striding towards me out on the terrace.
