THE LOST BOYS OF HAPPY VALLEY COLLEGE

A NOVEL

by Dick Carlsen


Formats

Softcover
£11.95
Softcover
£11.95

Book Details

Language : English
Publication Date : 14/04/2021

Format : Softcover
Dimensions : 6x9
Page Count : 280
ISBN : 9781665522359

About the Book

As a Peter Pan fan, imagine yourself flying in your dreams, without Tink’s fairy dust. While flying, you “see” other kids your age also flying. The story employs that fantasy. Eight young boys meet in their Peter Pan-induced flying dreams in the 1950’s. Destiny brings them all together in 1964 at Happy Valley College, a Disneyesque Fantasyland and Adventureland campus in northern California, where they form a bond, a tight brotherhood through athletics and their share of mischief-making, so much like Peter’s “Lost Boys” on Neverland. After one such incident they are brought before the Dean of Men, also a Peter Pan fan, who judges them of 19th century English public school “good character”, and symbolically labels the group his “Lost Boys”. The Lost Boys graduate, deal with the ever-present military draft and Vietnam War, and go their eight separate ways to pursue careers and live their lives. Their remarkable careers would make the dean proud. One quasi-Lost Boy, Tim, suffers demonstrably from Peter Pan Syndrome. In 2016, almost fifty years since the Lost Boys were all together at a San Francisco Forty Niners football game in 1969, they have a “seventy-year-olds” reunion at their campus, filled with adventures, mishaps, and renewed camaraderie. The week-long reunion concludes, and heartfelt farewells dominate. Does Tim beat the Syndrome? Will there be another reunion with all eight of the Lost Boys?


About the Author

Dick Carlsen was born in and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. He attended Chico State College, graduating in 1968, and completed his graduate studies at Indiana University. He is retired after a 44-year Navy civilian career, during which he traveled extensively to Navy activities worldwide. He lives in Virginia Beach, Virginia, with his wife Cathy and their rescue dog, Woody. They enjoy occasional trips to South and North Carolina beach areas, and Lake Gaston in North Carolina. His other novels include, Happy Valley College, The Head of the Snake, and Monkey Bottom, the latter a Navy-centric story.